In February this year, the AI protocol Virtuals in the Base ecosystem announced its cross-chain integration with Solana. However, the crypto market subsequently entered a liquidity crunch period, shifting the AI Agent sector from a buzz to a slump, and the Virtuals ecosystem also entered a period of dormancy.

At the beginning of March, BlockBeats conducted an interview with empty, co-founder of Virtuals. At that time, the team had not yet launched the Genesis Launch mechanism, which is now widely discussed, but they were internally exploring how to activate old assets, increase user engagement through mechanism design, and redefine token issuance and funding pathways. It was a time when the market had not yet recovered and the ecosystem was still in a cold start phase. However, the Virtuals team did not stop but instead continued to search for new product directions and narrative breakthroughs.

Two months later, the AI Agent sector revived, with the Virtuals token rebounding over 150%, and the Genesis mechanism becoming a key catalyst for ecosystem revitalization. From dynamic adjustments to scoring rules to the continued rise in project participation enthusiasm, and to the "new token with old token" mechanism loop, Virtuals gradually emerged from the winter and once again took the spotlight.

It is worth noting that Virtuals' Genesis mechanism shares some similarities with Binance's recently launched Alpha Points System, assessing user participation within the Alpha and Binance Wallet ecosystems to determine eligibility for Alpha token airdrops. Users can earn points through holdings, trading, and other means, with higher points leading to greater opportunities to participate in new projects. By using a points system to filter users and allocate resources, project teams can more effectively incentivize community participation, enhance project fairness, and transparency. The exploration of Virtuals and Binance may herald the emergence of a new trend in crypto financing.

Looking back at this conversation, the insights and judgments shown by empty in the interview are gradually demonstrating their foresight. This was not just an interview about the subscription mechanism but also a deep discussion on the path construction and underlying logic of an "asset-driven AI protocol."

From "Product" to "Platform": The Wall Street-style Infrastructure of the AI Agent

BlockBeats: Can you briefly share what the team has been primarily focused on recently?

empty: Currently, our work is mainly divided into two parts. The first part is that we aim to develop Virtuals into an agent service platform similar to "Wall Street." Imagine if you are an entrepreneur focused on Agent or Agent team development, and you need systematic support for the entire process from fundraising, token issuance to liquidity exit. We hope to provide a comprehensive service system for teams truly dedicated to Agent and AI development, allowing them to focus on developing core capabilities without distraction. This work also includes content related to retail trading, which can be elaborated on later.

Part 2, we are advancing our AI-related initiatives. Our vision is to build an AI society where every Agent can leverage its strengths and, through collaboration, achieve greater value together. Therefore, we have recently released a new standard — ACP (Agent Communication Protocol) — aimed at enabling different Agents to interact and cooperate with each other to jointly drive their business objectives. These are the two main directions we are currently focusing on.

BlockBeats: Could you elaborate on that?

empty: In my view, the customer base we target can be divided into three categories: the first category is teams focusing on developing Agents; the second category is investors, including retail investors, funds, and various investment institutions; the third category is end-users, the individuals who ultimately use Agent products.

However, our main emphasis is actually on the first two categories — teams and investors. For the end-users, we do not intend to directly intervene. Instead, we hope that each Agent team can solve the expansion issues in the end-user market on their own.

Furthermore, we also believe that interaction between Agents should become a core model. In simple terms, in the future, services should mostly be sold or provided by one Agent to another Agent, rather than just to human users. Therefore, in the team's business development efforts, we are actively helping existing AI teams find such clients and collaboration opportunities.

BlockBeats: Could you provide some specific examples?

empty: "Wall Street," in essence, revolves around the construction of a capital operation system. For example, if you are a tech team seeking funding, the traditional path is to approach VCs for fundraising and then start development after securing funds. If the project performs well, the next step may involve entering the secondary market, such as listing on the New York Stock Exchange or launching a token on exchanges like Binance for liquidity exit.

We aim to streamline this entire process — from early-stage financing, to the flexible funding needs during project development, to the final liquidity exit in the secondary market — covering and improving the whole process, which is an integrated chain we hope to complete.

And this part of the work is different from ACP (Agent Communication Protocol), which is more about establishing interaction standards between agents and does not directly involve the capital operation system.

BlockBeats: How does it differ from the current Virtuals Launchpad? Is the funding also from the C end?

empty: Actually, when you launch a coin on Virtuals now, if it is not truly funded, it's just creating a coin, and in reality, no money is raised. The service we can currently provide is through setting a transaction tax mechanism during buying and selling, from which a portion of the tax is extracted and returned to the entrepreneurs, hoping this can become their cash flow source.

However, the issue can actually be divided into two parts. The first is how to truly help teams complete financing, which we have not completely solved yet. The second is about the structural issues in the current project issuance model. Simply put, the current version is somewhat like the past Pumpfun model—where a portion of the chips are sold to external investors right when the project goes live. The reality is that there are too many institutional groups and "snipers" in the current market.

When a truly outstanding project launches its coin, before it reaches ordinary retail investors, it has already been snapped up by institutions at a very high valuation. By the time retail investors can get involved, the price is often already high, and the project quality may have deteriorated, distorting the entire value issuance system.

To address this issue, we hope to explore a new coin issuance and financing model that aims to ensure that the project's chips are neither tightly held by themselves nor primarily flow to large institutions in the English-speaking world but truly remain in the hands of ordinary investors who believe in the project and are willing to support it long-term. We are considering how to design such a new issuance mechanism to address this fundamental problem.

BlockBeats: What will the specific idea of the new model be?

empty: Regarding the funding aspect, we haven't fully figured it out yet. At the current stage, the most direct way seems to be to seek VC funding or to raise funds through public presales and similar forms. But honestly, I am personally not very fond of the traditional public presale model.

Regarding "fair distribution," we are trying to approach it from a different perspective—hoping to redesign the mechanism based on "reputation."

Specifically, if you have contributed to the entire Virtuals ecosystem, such as early participation, providing support, or building, then you will have a higher priority when purchasing premium tokens later on. Through this method, we hope to allocate more resources to users who genuinely support ecosystem development rather than letting them be dominated by short-term arbitrageurs.

How to "Self-Support" the Team Through Transaction Fees

BlockBeats: Would you consider adopting a model similar to the LBP launched by Fjord Foundry in the past, or a model like Daos.fun that uses a whitelist mechanism? To some extent, these models are somewhat similar to the idea you just mentioned of giving priority to those who have contributed to the ecosystem. However, these practices later sparked some controversies, such as whitelist insider trading and unfair allocation issues. Will Virtuals consider drawing on the strengths of these models in its design, or will it proactively avoid similar issues?

empty: I believe the biggest problem with a whitelist mechanism is that the selection power for the whitelist lies in the hands of the project team. This is very similar to "insider trading" behavior. The project team can choose to allocate whitelist spots to themselves or their friends, resulting in the ultimate chips still being held by a few.

What we want to do is still something similar to a whitelist mechanism, but the difference is that the right to be whitelisted should be based on a publicly transparent rule system, rather than unilaterally decided by the project team. Only in this way can true fair distribution be achieved and insider trading issues be avoided.

I think in today's AI age, many times starting a business does not require a large amount of funds. I often emphasize to the team that you should prioritize self-reliance, such as by building a community, rather than thinking about fundraising from the beginning. Because once you raise funds, it actually means taking on debt.

We prefer to view the early development path from the perspective of a Training Fee. In other words, a project can choose to mint coins directly, support daily operations through the cash flow generated by transaction fees. In this way, the project can obtain initial funding through open development processes without depending on external investments. If the project grows, there will naturally be opportunities for liquidity exit through the secondary market.

Of course, the most ideal situation is for the project itself to have a stable source of cash flow, so that it doesn't even need to sell its own coins. This is a truly healthy and sustainable state.

When I communicate this approach with the team, it's quite interesting that those projects that truly have a "get rich quick" mindset lose interest as soon as they hear about this mechanism. They feel that in this model, they can neither engage in insider trading nor easily engage in short-term arbitrage, so they quickly choose to leave.

However, from our perspective, this is actually a good filtering mechanism. In this way, projects with different ideologies will naturally be filtered out, leaving behind those teams that are willing to truly build and align with our values, working together to make things happen.

BlockBeats: This concept can develop some AI agents that can generate revenue.

empty: I think this is very necessary. Honestly, looking at today's market, products with stable cash flow are few and far between, but I don't think that means we should stop trying. In fact, in the teams we interact with every day, at least more than half of them still hold a long-term vision. Many times, they have even provided us with early-stage VC funding in advance or expressed strong willingness to cooperate.

Actually, for them, what they really want is to build a strong community because the community can provide better feedback for their products, which is their true purpose. This may sound a bit far-fetched, but there are indeed many such teams, and those are the teams we really want to support.

Who Should AI Agent Be Sold To?

BlockBeats: You just mentioned this "AI Wall Street" product system—from funding, issuance to exit, it builds a complete set of processes. Is this mechanism more to incentivize teams willing to issue tokens? Or does it also consider how to better support teams that hope to develop through the product's own cash flow? Will these two types of teams be treated differently in your system, or are there any mechanism designs that can support entrepreneurs on different paths?

empty: Yes, the core responsibility of our BD is actually to encourage teams to issue tokens. To be more direct, it is to guide them to think about the possibility and significance of issuing tokens. So the most common question teams ask is, "Why issue tokens?" At this point, we need to use different ways and perspectives to help them understand the underlying value logic. Of course, if the final judgment is not appropriate, we will not force them to proceed.

However, we have observed a very clear trend that the traditional funding path is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. The old model of raising funds, getting big, and issuing tokens is gradually becoming ineffective. Faced with this reality, many teams find themselves in an awkward position. And we hope to provide a different solution from the perspective of the chain and encryption, allowing them to find new development paths.

BlockBeats: Understand. What I actually wanted to express just now is that, as you also mentioned, the traditional AI model still heavily relies on "burning money" competition. However, after DeepSeek emerged, some teams or investors with relatively small funds in the market have rekindled their confidence and eagerly entered this field. How do you view this phenomenon? Will this have any impact on teams currently engaged in AI fundamental research or AI application layer development?

empty: Yes, I think, even without discussing DeepSeek for now, from a traditional perspective, so far, the only truly profitable player in the AI field is NVIDIA, while almost all other players have yet to achieve profitability. So, in reality, no one has truly enjoyed the fruits of this business model, and everyone is still exploring how to create truly productive applications for the consumer market.

No field can rapidly receive community feedback like the crypto industry. Once you launch a token, users will actively read every word of the whitepaper and try out every feature of your product.

Of course, this mechanism is not suitable for everyone. For example, some Agent products lean toward Web2, and for crypto users, they may not perceive their value. Therefore, I would also encourage teams developing Agent products in the Virtuals ecosystem to carefully consider how to truly leverage and design Crypto as a differentiating element of their own product.

BlockBeats: I particularly agree with this point. In the Crypto field, the pace of AI iteration is indeed very fast, but is the feedback from these users really representative of genuine market demand? Or does this feedback truly align with more mainstream, scalable demand?

empty: I think that many times, the product itself should not be aggressively promoted to an unsuitable user base. For example, the most successful point of AIXBT is that its users are the group of people who hype up others' content, so their usage behavior is very natural, and they do not feel forced to use a boring product. The concept of mass adoption has been talked about for many years, and perhaps everyone should have given up on this obsession a long time ago. We might as well just accept it and sell our stuff to people in the crypto industry.

BlockBeats: What should be the dynamic relationship between AI Agents and the tokens corresponding to AI Agents?

empty: Yes, I think this can be divided into two key points. First, it's not really about investing in a specific AI Agent, but rather in investing in the team behind operating this Agent. You should understand it as a mindset closer to venture capital: you are investing in the person, not the product they are currently working on. Because the product itself can change rapidly, the team may realize the direction is wrong a month later and adjust immediately. So, here, the "coin" essentially represents trust in the team, not in a specific Agent.

Secondly, the expectation is that once a certain Agent's product is developed, in the future, it can truly generate cash flow, or have real-world use cases (utility), thereby enabling the corresponding token.

BlockBeats: What do you think are some empowering mechanisms that we have not seen yet but may emerge in the future and are worth looking forward to?

empty: There are mainly two parts. The first is the more common type where if you want to use my product, you must pay a fee, or use the token for payment, indirectly achieving "soft destruction" or consumption of the token.

But I think a more interesting empowerment mechanism is to consider from the perspective of customer acquisition cost. That is to say, you want your users to also be your investors so they have an incentive to actively promote you and attract more users.

Open Source ≠ Empowerment, Developer ≠ Community

BlockBeats: Based on these viewpoints, how do you view ai16z, which doesn't seem too optimistic overall in terms of project design and token mechanism?

empty: From a very pure investment perspective, setting aside our relationship with them, it is actually very simple. What they are currently doing does not empower the token itself. From an open-source perspective, an open-source model itself cannot directly empower the token.

But it still has value because it's like an option, meaning that if one day they suddenly decide to do something, like launching a launchpad, those who knew early and participated early may benefit from it.

Developers may indeed use their Launchpad in the future, and only at that moment will the token truly be empowered. This is currently the biggest question mark—if this model really works, I think it will be very powerful because they have indeed reached a large number of developers.

However, I still have many personal questions. For example, even though I am a developer using Eliza, it does not mean that I will definitely choose to launch my coin on their Launchpad. I will shop around, I will compare. Moreover, the product capabilities and community operation capabilities required to run a Launchpad are completely different from those needed to develop an open-source framework, which is another important uncertainty.

BlockBeats: Where does this difference manifest?

empty: At Virtuals, we deal with customer service-related issues almost every day. Whenever any team rugs on our platform, even if they are not directly related to us, users will come to us first to complain.

At this point, we must step in to reassure users and think about how to reduce the overall rug risk. Once a team is rug-pulled due to their token design error or technical mistake leading to a hack or asset theft, we often have to dig into our own pockets to ensure that their community can at least recover some funds so that the project can start over. These teams may be strong technically but not necessarily good at token issuance, resulting in asset loss due to operational errors that led to an attack. Anything related to "being scammed" is already very troublesome for us, and doing this work is not much different from running an exchange's customer service.

On the other hand, doing BD is also very difficult. Excellent teams have many options available to them; they can choose to launch on Pumpfun or an exchange, so why should they come to us? Behind this, there must be a whole support system in place, including funding support, technical assistance, marketing, etc., and there should be no issues in any of these links.

BlockBeats: Let's continue discussing Virtuals' current Launchpad business along this line of conversation. Some community members on Twitter have compiled the overall profit situation of Virtuals Launchpad, and indeed, the number of profitable projects currently seems low. Will Launchpad continue to be Virtuals' main business focus? Or will the future shift gradually to the "AI Wall Street" path you mentioned earlier?

empty: In fact, these two areas are essentially the same thing, part of a comprehensive system, so we must continue to move forward. Market fluctuations are normal, and one thing we must always adhere to is: a very clear understanding of who our core customers are. I have always emphasized that we have only two types of customers—teams. So, the market situation is not the most important thing for us. What is crucial is that at every key point, the best choice for a team to launch their token is still through us, Virtuals.

BlockBeats: Are you concerned that the narrative of "Crypto + AI" or "Crypto AI Agent" is outdated? If there is another bull market in the future, do you think the focus of market hype may have shifted away from these areas?

empty: It's possible. I think it is what it is. This scenario could indeed happen, but it's also beyond our control. However, if you ask me which track among all possible trends is more likely to maintain a long-term lead, I still believe it's AI. From a poker-playing perspective, it remains the optimal choice.

Moreover, our team's technical framework and underlying capabilities have long been established. Now we are just going with the flow. More importantly, we truly love this endeavor and approach it with curiosity. Waking up every morning with the drive to explore the latest technologies is quite fulfilling, isn't it?

Often, one should not only look at the product itself. In fact, many excellent teams have the genetic makeup that determines their ability to excel within the rules—perhaps in the past, when engaged in OTC trading, their transactions were in the millions, and these teams' CEOs may have had a yearly salary of $1 million. If they are willing to embark on a solo project, from an angel investor's or VC's perspective, essentially, it's acquiring a high-quality team at a very cost-effective price.

Furthermore, these assets are liquid, not locked. If you are not in urgent need of funds, you can completely invest in the tokens of excellent teams in the early stages and quietly wait for them to work miracles. This is essentially the logic behind such a move.

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