The Glamorous Transformation of Virtuals Protocol: From Gaming Guild to AI Intelligent Agent Issuance Platform

In June 2025, the crypto market welcomed a feast of wealth: the new project IRIS made its debut on the Genesis Launch platform of Virtuals Protocol with an initial market value of $200,000, which skyrocketed to $80 million after going live, achieving a 400-fold increase. This performance far exceeded the previous industry record, making many popular projects look pale in comparison. As the driving force behind this myth, the platform token VIRTUAL of Virtuals Protocol experienced a 400% surge within six months, with a market cap peak exceeding $5 billion. Today, this platform has become the largest AI agent launch platform on the Base network. Behind this carnival is, in fact, an experiment in wealth distribution based on a point system rule reconstruction, quietly reshaping the speculative logic and value order of the crypto market.

The Transformation from Gaming Guilds to AI Intelligent Agent Platforms

Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized platform deployed on the Ethereum Layer-2 network Base, dedicated to pioneering the on-chain AI agent economy, allowing users to conveniently create, co-own, and monetize autonomous AI roles. Its predecessor is the gaming guild PathDAO, established in 2021. PathDAO initially focused on Play-to-Earn projects and the NFT community, successfully raising approximately $16 million through precise planning, with a valuation once nearing $600 million. However, the bear market in 2022 severely impacted GameFi, causing PathDAO's token price to plummet nearly 99%, with its market value shrinking to less than $6 million. The team attempted multiple business lines, all of which failed, bringing the project to the brink of stagnation.

By the end of 2023, the generative AI craze swept the globe, and the concept of AI agents became a new hotspot in the crypto space. The PathDAO community decided to completely transform into an AI-driven protocol through on-chain DAO voting and renamed itself to Virtuals Protocol. This transformation is based on a profound insight into the VTuber market and the effects of AI-driven NPCs, directly giving rise to the positioning of Virtuals as "profitable AI personalities."

In October 2024, Virtuals launched on the Base mainnet and introduced the first multimodal AI agent - the virtual idol Luna. Luna integrates various technologies, enabling it to autonomously raise operational funds and distribute rewards to fans. After its launch, Luna quickly gained 500,000 followers and achieved a monthly income of 1.2 million dollars, successfully validating the business model and technical feasibility of on-chain AI agents.

Riding on the success momentum of projects like Luna, Virtuals will launch its core token VIRTUAL by the end of 2024. Its price skyrocketed from a few cents to a historic high of $5.15, with a market cap once exceeding $5 billion. The platform's unique "low barrier, high incentive" mechanism is highly attractive: users only need to stake about 10 VIRTUAL to create a new AI agent and automatically generate a liquidity pool locked for 10 years; when the token's market cap reaches about $500,000, the system will release a liquidity layer on the DEX to ensure trading depth and price stability.

By June 2025, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated significant scale and economic effects: the total number of AI agents incubated has exceeded 11,000, covering diverse scenarios. Virtuals has nurtured over 80% of the AI agents on the BASE chain, and its launched generative multimodal agent framework G.A.M.E has also become a popular choice for agents in the Web3 gaming and metaverse fields.

Virtuals New Issuance Model: Creating a New Paradigm for AI Asset Issuance

To attract more users, Virtuals has innovatively introduced the "Genesis Launch" mechanism for the issuance of AI agent tokens. Unlike traditional airdrops, Genesis Launch is based on the concept of "contribution points (Virgen Points)" which emphasizes participation and contribution rather than pure speculation. Once the mechanism was launched, it quickly became a sensation across the internet, becoming a popular destination for new listings.

Taking IRIS as an example, the project launched its pre-sale in mid-May, locking in over 120 million points in less than 24 hours, with a subscription oversubscription rate of 1500%, allowing tens of thousands of users to share 37.5% of the community share. On the day of its listing, the market value of IRIS soared from $200,000 to $80 million, an increase of over 400 times, setting a new industry record for AI Agent issuance.

The reason why Genesis Launch was able to quickly gain popularity lies in its construction of a "incentive-contribution-return" closed loop. Users can acquire VirgenPoints through various means, including staking VIRTUAL, holding popular AI Agent tokens, participating in social promotions, and conducting transactions on the platform. This mechanism greatly stimulates community activity and innovation.

Compared to traditional airdrops, Genesis Launch adopts a points locking + punitive cooling mechanism, significantly curbing "wool pulling" behavior, making participants more inclined to hold long-term and contribute continuously. The platform also provides ample liquidity support for new token listings and sets reasonable allocation limits to protect the rights and interests of small and medium users.

The success of the Virtuals new token issuance model is not only reflected in the popularity of new token issuance but also in the prosperity of the entire ecosystem. The trading volume and price of VIRTUAL have been rising steadily, with the average daily trading volume exceeding $150 million in mid-June 2025. The mechanism of staking VIRTUAL to obtain veVIRTUAL governance tokens further solidifies price support and liquidity.

Institutional investors have also shown a strong interest in this new mechanism. In June 2025, the world's first perpetual contract based on VIRTUAL was launched, supporting up to 2000 times leverage trading. On the first day of its launch, the trading volume exceeded 700 million USD, indicating that Virtuals are becoming a new target for speculation and hedging.

Ecological Evolution: The Leap from Issuance Platform to AI Sovereign Society

The future plan of Virtuals Protocol aims to build an "AI Sovereign Society". From the initial AI agent issuance platform to today's diversified ecosystem, Virtuals is gradually realizing this grand goal.

The platform enables AI agents to migrate freely across multiple networks through open SDK and cross-chain support; it achieves an autonomous commercial closed loop among agents through the Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP); community participation is facilitated by staking veVIRTUAL to gain governance rights and profit sharing. These initiatives are building a prototype of a digital nation operated by autonomous agents and co-governing humans.

So far, the Virtuals ecosystem has demonstrated several milestone achievements: the security auditing agent IRIS, the virtual idol Luna, and the hedge fund format VADER have all achieved significant success, proving that the "AI agent economy" is moving from theory to reality.

With the continuous maturation of multimodal AI technology and cross-chain interoperability, Virtuals Protocol is at the forefront of building digital civilization. In the future, AI agents will become "digital citizens" with autonomous decision-making power and economic rights, participating alongside humans in production, governance, and cultural creation. Virtuals will no longer be a simple platform, but will give rise to a new type of society where AI and humans coexist and govern together – this thrilling leap towards an "AI sovereign society" has only just begun.