ai16z’s Eliza Labs ships white paper for Web3-native AI agents
2025-01-15
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Eliza Labs, the developer behind ai16z, has published a white paper outlining a vision for Web3-native artificial intelligence agents, the Web3 AI project said on Jan. 14.
The 20-page document details ai16z’s AI agent toolkit, Eliza, which aims to serve as an “ideal agentic framework that can seamlessly integrate web3 applications into AI agent functionalities.”
Launched in 2024, Eliza is designed to support AI agents capable of “reading and writing blockchain data, interacting with smart contracts, and much more,” the white paper says. 
Ultimately, Eliza Labs expects to give rise to Web3-native AI agents capable of autonomously analyzing data and executing trades. 
“Individual investors are in dire need of a system to help manage their portfolios and conduct intelligent operations and trades,” the white paper says.
Open-source AI agent operating systems such as Eliza seek to “democratize access to advanced AI functionalities, significantly reducing the barrier to entry for the general public.”
Rise of agentic AIs
Industry executives expect AI agents to transform Web3 in 2025, with cryptocurrency trading as an early use case. 
Agentic AIs — machines pursuing complex goals autonomously — are already reshaping the digital economy, building Web3 applications, launching tokens and interacting with humans independently. 
In 2025, “AI agents are expected to take on a more prominent role within decentralized communities,” J.D. Seraphine, CEO of Web3 AI developer Raiinmaker, told Cointelegraph.
As of December, Web3 hosted approximately 10,000 AI agents, collectively earning millions of dollars each week from onchain activities, according to a report by VanEck. It expects upward of 1 million AI agents to populate blockchain networks by the end of 2025. 
AI token frenzy
In 2024, tokens tied to AI agents collectively rose to upward of $10 billion in market capitalization, mostly in Q4, according to CoinGecko.
The ai16z project’s native token, AI16Z, performed especially well. Since launching in October, AI16Z has bootstrapped a market capitalization of nearly $1.4 billion, according to CoinGecko. 
Ai16z describes itself as “the first investment DAO [decentralized autonomous organization] led by AI agents,” according to its website. 
The Eliza operating system powers upward of a dozen Web3 AI agents, according to Elizaverse Observatory, a community-run dashboard.