VANA price

Added bag of $VANA @vana here, AI data layer for peeps. Looks ready for breakout from here, CZ is advisor, Coinbase + others tier1 VC backing them. My target will be just 3x from here, like 14$ to 15$, as there's no trade war for next two to three months so we have hopium of mini altseason.

⁦@anna_kazlauskas⁩ of $VANA dropping tons of knowledge regarding Data here at Consensus

VC Portfolio | @Paradigm @Blast $BLAST @Monad_xyz $MON (Testnet) @dYdX $DYDX @Optimism $OP @Phantom N/A @OsmosisZone $OSMO @Vana $VANA @Starknet $STRK @Cosmos $ATOM @Uniswap $UNI

According to the RootData token unlocking data of Web3 asset data platform RootData, vana (VANA) will unlock about 1.62 million tokens, worth about $9.7 million, at 19:00 on May 16, Beijing time.

Original title: AI Trends in the Trenches Original author: @Defi0xJeff Original compilation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats Editor's note: The AI Agent project has attracted short-term attention due to Genesis' pull-up, but institutions are more concerned about decentralized AI infrastructure such as $TAO, $GRASS, etc. Market trends show that storytelling + technology teams have more long-term potential. The strategy is to short-term speculation on the Agent project, roll profits into the DeAI infrastructure, and bet on teams that can tell good stories and do technology. The following is the original content (the original content has been edited for ease of reading and comprehension): About two and a half weeks have passed since the bottom of the AI proxy track (with a market capitalization of about $4 billion), and the market is currently in a complete @virtuals_io bull market. That's right...... Only Virtuals is on the rise at the moment. It's a lot like last October-November when Virtuals first launched its proxy tokenization platform, when it established itself as a pioneer in the "tokenization" of AI projects and was the first full-fledged player to offer a top-tier issuance network (provided you're willing to do a "fair launch"). What's different this time is that they've just launched a new feature: Genesis Launch, a fairer way to distribute and give back to early supporters. This brings us to the first trend we want to talk about: Fair Launch / Gamified Launch Platform From the past when Degen players randomly rushed some messy tokens on PumpFun, to now it is almost a brand new project that "earns" 5-10 times the return. Behind this is the introduction of a "points" mechanism to better bind the interests of all parties, coupled with a fixed-market capitalization, fixed-supply launch model - each project starts at 112,000 $VIRTUAL (about $200,000 FDV). Each participant can receive up to 0.5% of the token share based on the points they earn. Points can be earned by holding/staking $VIRTUAL, holding major proxy tokens (they have an official list), and even actively discussing Virtuals on social platforms. Virtuals has recently added a "cooling-off" mechanic that restricts quick selling, further enhancing the appeal of Genesis Launchpad – make you think twice before you sell. The platform has been a remarkable success, @BasisOS is the most successful example to date, with participants receiving up to 200 times the revenue. Since then, Virtuals has almost always launched new projects with a return of 5x to 40x. It is precisely because of the explosion of Genesis Launch that funds and attention have been refocused on the Virtuals ecosystem, raising the valuation floor of almost all agency projects on the platform. However, despite the resurgence of market heat, the "scarcity of high-quality projects" is still one of the biggest problems in the Virtuals ecosystem - which leads to the second trend: 2. The heat and deal structure outweigh the quality of the project itself As a speculator/trader, as long as you understand the structure of Genesis Launch, you can make money even for projects with average projects and mediocre teams. Because a project that starts with a valuation of $200,000 is likely to pull a wave first and then smash it, especially if you know that the project has no "ghosts" and has not done a private equity round. As a project party, if you have a relatively novel idea, you can issue coins first. You don't need to make a product first, you don't need to figure out who your target users are, and you don't need to verify whether there is real demand in the market, let alone revenue and user growth. Directly create the maximum heat and start the rush (if you have a demo of course plus points, it doesn't matter if you don't, laughs). As long as the project meets the basic requirements (a decent white paper, a product concept that makes sense, and the team doesn't look too collapsed), it can basically take off on Virtuals' Genesis Launch. The most important lesson for investors here is to treat these launches as short-term speculative opportunities, not as medium- to long-term value investments. Because nine times out of ten, these so-called "AI projects" are essentially packaged like AI shitters. I also gave a very typical example on my Substack, so if you are interested, you can check it out. But because there are so many shitters now, opportunities for truly high-quality projects have emerged – whether it's the AI track, or other directions outside of AI. This leads to a third trend: 3. Potential opportunities for DeFi projects on Virtuals I spoke to the @logarithm_fi / @BasisOS team two months ago. Their product is a bit like Ethena, doing something like a "delta-neutral strategy", but without the stablecoin part. I have known this team since they were doing Logarithm, when they were still working on LPDeFi narrative (a product that uses Uniswap v3 liquidity as a strategy), and I liked this team a lot, so I gave them some suggestions on token economics, listing plans, etc. To be honest, I didn't think their coin would go up that much, because while their DeFi product is fundamental, the so-called "AI" part is actually very early. But it turned out that none of this mattered at all – the project still wiped out the entire market. Judging by the success of Basis, the Virtuals platform does now offer a big window of opportunity for DeFi projects. Even if you don't have the "token incentive TVL" mechanism of traditional DeFi projects, as long as your product itself is solid and logical enough, with the traffic + sentiment of Virtuals, TVL will naturally be able to pull up. So if you have a mature DeFi product and want to improve user acquisition efficiency through AI, or optimize the structure of the product itself with AI technology, you can come and talk to me, and I would love to brainstorm together. In addition to the "getting market attention" layer, a new experimental gameplay is now starting to emerge on Virtuals, much like the wave of Ethereum shitter tokens in 2023-24 - which leads to a fourth trend: 4. Use the protocol revenue generated by "trading volume" as the growth engine There was a time when there were a lot of small Ponzi DeFi projects on the market, experimenting with various token models: for example, charging a fee of 1-3% on each transaction, using this part of the revenue to roll over the coffers of large projects, support their Ponzi DeFi strategies, and then return the earnings/dividends to token holders. At that time, there were not many projects on Ethereum, and users were "rich and daring", and the project party relied on this game to earn a six-figure or even seven-figure income in a week or two. Now, we're starting to see something similar happening in AI agent circles. A 1% transaction fee is charged by default for each transaction on Virtuals, of which 70% is returned to the project team. Some other Launchpads also have a 1-2% fee mechanism, with a rebate rate of 70%-100%. For example, the @Squidllora that was recently launched on the @autodotfun platform (behind it is the intelligent support provided by @AlloraNetwork) uses this part of the creator fee to expand its own treasury, and then uses the money to trade mainstream coins, and the strategy relies on the inference model provided by Allora (if you are not familiar with Allora, its positioning is a bit like "pure financial version of Bittensor"—— Scientists compete to see who can make the strongest crypto prediction model, covering a variety of time dimensions). A portion of the profits earned from trading will be used to buy back $SQUID tokens. The advantages of this model are obvious, especially for projects that are well-funded and do not rely on fees to support their teams. The project team can use the AI agent token as a marketing tool and user diversion tool to gain attention, accumulate fee income, and start a whole new set of AI experiments. However, looking back at the entire AI agent battlefield, except for the Virtuals ecosystem, there is basically nothing else to fight on other platforms, and many teams still do not rise even if they develop openly and continue to deliver. This leads to a fifth trend: 5. Virtuals is the only one, and almost no other platform has risen As a result of the Genesis Launch, the bottom of the valuation of the Agent project on Virtuals continues to rise. However, it is important to note that the emergence of this wave of new projects does not represent a significant improvement in fundamentals or technology, the real catalyst is a huge optimization of the trading structure - in other words, more people are now willing to play the game of Virtuals because they know that they can make money. This trend is likely to continue until the price of existing projects reaches a phased top/local ceiling. Once the price can't rise, some attention will naturally start to spill over and turn to other ecosystems, such as @CreatorBid, @arcdotfun, and @autodotfun, especially those projects that have a low market capitalization but have obvious fundamental improvements (new features, new products, new collaborations). At present, CreatorBid (CB) and Arc are the two most noteworthy ecosystems, and there are still several undervalued projects that have not yet started to rise: for example, the regular 3-4 targets on CB that integrate with subnets or focus on Bittensor product development; Or some of the handshake projects on Arc that are directly related to Ryzome are also worth keeping an eye on. The best way to get a card slot is to lay it down in advance before everyone notices the value of these tokens. 6. AI investment opportunities remain very limited for institutions Despite the sharp rise in the prices of major AI Agent tokens such as $VIRTUAL and $AI 16Z, many institutions are still in a wait-and-see mode, for the simple reason that these tokens are only suitable for retail investors/degens, with thin liquidity and fragile LP structures (especially on Virtuals). Because of this - the lack of mature liquidity infrastructure + the attention of decentralized AI is on the rise - institutional funds have begun to turn to invest in AI infrastructure, Agent L1, and public chain-level AI labs, rather than the current batch of short-term speculation Agent project tokens. You may be curious, what are these institutions buying? $GRASS $TAO (including subnets) $VANA $FLOCK $PROMPT (maybe) There are also a number of projects that are not online but have a clear moat, such as @NousResearch, @PluralisHQ, and @PrimeIntellect Most of these projects are doing Web3 of truly high-performance models and decentralization of model ownership, not the "shell" of decentralized GPT, but a truly complex infra + model layer, with a high threshold, no understanding, and no one knows how to vote. How can we better position ourselves based on these trends? My own strategy is simple: gradually roll over the profits from short-term AI Agent projects (especially those that don't have strong teams but Genesis pulls hard) into DeAI Infra. It is important to know that these infrastructure projects will not explode in the short term, because most of them have no consumer products and are slowly built on the Infra layer. But just as OpenAI, Grok, and Anthropic suddenly evolved in terms of daily tasks, real-time retrieval, code generation, etc., the Web3 model will also usher in a qualitative change at some point in time - truly capable of Web2/Web3 native tasks. So should we take a heavy position in DeAI Infra? Neither is it. Crypto is essentially a narrative and distribution-driven marketplace. Distribute ≫ technology, which is a "90% storytelling + 10% model" game. As long as a project can tell a story, have a good UI/UX, know how to go live, how to design a token mechanism, and how to attract users to retain users, then it can live well. Therefore, my core investment logic is still to invest in teams that understand the two-wheel drive of "narrative + technology". It's like Web2 VC will invest in SaaS in some vertical fields, although the open source model may be called behind it, but relying on its own data and operations, the product barriers are still full. I believe this logic will still hold true in Web3 in the short term, especially now that hype and community are the main drivers, and what is easy to understand will be easy to sell. Now the market is moving in this direction: · Genesis Launch is becoming the "industry default" More and more teams are starting to work with Infra projects, not just for hype, but also to actually use each other's technology While engaging in distribution, we also do real AI technology, and narrative + hard work begins to integrate Quick summary Virtuals' Genesis Launch model is dominating market attention and earnings; Most of the projects are hype > technology, and the essence is still short-term trading; DeFi projects with fundamentals have found incremental opportunities in the Virtuals ecosystem; Transaction volume drives creators' income, which is setting off a new wave of experimentation; Virtuals is currently ahead, but other ecosystems such as CreatorBid and Arc may also make up for it soon; Institutions are still on the sidelines, more betting on decentralized AI Infra; The optimal strategy is to roll the short-term gains of the Agent project into DeAI Infra and bet on teams that understand both the narrative and the technology. 「Original link」