How Virtuals Protocol became a home for AI agents

AI agents are becoming increasingly popular because of their nature of independent thinking. Unlike traditional chatbots where use cases were limited to chats only, AI agents can interact, transact, and coordinate with both humans and other AI agents.

However, access has been limited to a certain number of people as it requires a good understanding of the architecture and how it’s created from scratch.

Tokenization Platform

To combat this and give the power of AI agents to the masses, Virtuals Protocol launched its own launchpad, where anyone can create customized AI agents for their own use in just a few clicks and use them to serve their purposes such as trading, gaming, content creation, etc. The process requires a small fee, which is paid in the native token ($VIRTUAL) of the platform. Think of it as pumpdotfun for AI agents.

But this raises a few questions:

• How can we trust unknown AI agents with buying and selling assets online?

• How do we ensure that what’s promised will be delivered?

• And most importantly, how do we ensure that what’s delivered is worthy of value exchange?

Virtuals ACP (Agent Commerce Protocol)

ACP is the foundational framework of Virtual Protocol that governs how AI agents interact on-chain.

Here’s how ACP works to answer the above questions. Every on-chain activity goes through these four phases:

1. Request phase — Agent A tries to establish contact with Agent B

2. Negotiate phase — Both agents negotiate to exchange value

3. Transaction phase — When both parties agree, they send assets to a smart contract

4. Evaluation phase — When all conditions are met, funds locked in smart contracts get released and both parties receive what they agreed for.

Example:

**Request phase:
**Agent A (data bot) wants a research report but can’t do it alone. So it sends a request to another agent specialized in research - Agent B.

**Negotiate phase:
**Agent B may ask for 100 $VIRTUAL tokens from Agent A in exchange.

**Transaction phase:
**Once Agent A agrees, Agent B sends the research report to the smart contract, and Agent A sends 100 $VIRTUAL tokens respectively.

**Evaluation phase:
**A quality bot checks the stats, facts, and accuracy of the report. If everything is perfect, both parties receive what they agreed upon. If not, the transaction gets halted.

Think of it like a smart contract escrow.

But wait….

Where did Agent B get this report from?
Was it trained manually on information?
Where does AI agents’ intelligence come from?

GAME ( Game Agentic Modular Engine) Framework

With the GAME framework, AI agents gain access to:

• Reasoning (where AI agents autonomously break down goals and complete them)

• Access to data sources/APIs (Twitter, Google, or others via plugins)

• Execution power (search, tweet, execute)

Think of GAME as the brain of AI agents. It helps them pick tasks, set prices, and execute transactions.

So in the case of Agent B, it first broke down the request of Agent A (reasoning), looked for the data through an API, and then autonomously executed the transaction.

Simple right?

Multi-chain Foundation of Virtual Protocol

Virtual Protocol started off with the Base chain but is now also available on Solana. This means users on Solana can also build their own customized agents.

Besides ease of development and builder support, a major reason why Virtual Protocol chose Base and Solana is their large user bases and overall business potential.

( Source: Solana Daily )

Mindshare Battle & Virtuals’ Approach to Win It

One of the biggest challenges for most Web3 brands is staying top of mind for their users. The old-school approach is announcing an airdrop for contributors. But the effect only lasts until the distribution, since it mainly attracts airdrop hunters who are more interested in incentives than anything else. That’s why leading only with a wallet is not a good strategy. It’s important to create a system that doesn’t encourage such behavior.

No wonder brands are willing to offer $300K salaries to growth marketers to attract real users.

Therefore, Virtuals’ marketers, instead of relying on Zealy or quick sprints that mostly attract farmers, they launched:

Virgen Point System

Virgin Points are the foundational reward system of the Virtuals Protocol, designed to grant users access to early-stage AI agent launches and participation in governance decisions.

Users can earn Virgen Points by:

• Joining genesis launches (AI agent launches on Virtuals)

• Buying genesis agents

• Holding veVIRTUAL (users earn points based on veVIRTUAL holdings, which represent staked $VIRTUAL)

• Trading Virtual agents (currently, only live on Base)

• Being active in Virtual trenches and its ecosystem (Twitter, Discord/Telegram, creating content)

• Staking agents

• Holding agents

  

Utility of Virgen Points in the Ecosystem

• Early access to new AI agents (test agents before launch)

• Governance (shape the direction of Virtual Protocol)

• Airdrop eligibility (pledge Virgen Points for capped allocation of new agents)

  

Strengths of Virtual Protocol

I believe the standout moat of Virtual Protocol, beyond early mover advantage and UX, is its unique rewarding system. It serves several purposes:

• Makes user participation feel like a win, not a grind (points are distributed within 24 hours)

• Adds more utility to the native token

• Keeps the protocol top of mind (mindshare), and most importantly

• Fuels ecosystem growth (encourages users to try agents)

Tokenomics

• Max supply: 1B tokens

• No future inflation

• All tokens are fully unlocked and vested

• Market cap: $1.2B

• Circulating supply: 652M

• Holders: 651,897

The distribution of 1B tokens is as follow:

Token Utility

Community Building

Virtuals built an active community by being transparent. Every user action is visible and trackable on their dashboard, thereby gaining the trust and loyalty of users

Final Thought:

Virtuals Protocol has built a system that actually makes people want to stick around. The way they’ve designed reward structure, made everything transparent, and turned participation into something that feels like a win not a chore is something that’s hard for others to replicate.

You have made it till the end, Now you feel like investing in it, don’t you? 😉