AI agents have undoubtedly emerged as the driving force in this bull market. New AI roles keep appearing, while platforms similar to Pump.fun are launching one after another, eagerly joining this market feast. As the AI agent space becomes increasingly crowded, astute market participants have begun focusing on value discovery—seeking AI agent projects that can deliver genuine value. This search led them to Eliza.

Eliza is depicted as a long-haired girl wearing a T-shirt. However, she is not just an AI agent character; she is an open-source modular framework that allows developers to create and deploy their own AI agents. Data shows that Eliza’s adoption rate has recently even surpassed Google Gemini, making it the top-ranked AI repository on GitHub, highlighting its enormous growth potential.

This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the Eliza project, covering aspects such as the team’s background, market performance, modular architecture, tokenomics, and future plans, while also exploring the ai16z ecosystem behind it for user reference.

What is Eliza?

Eliza has a dual identity. On one hand, she is an AI agent with the persona of a long-haired girl wearing a T-shirt. Like most agent characters, she has an independent X (formerly Twitter) account, @elizawakesup, with over 20,000 followers. She can autonomously post updates and replies, and recently, Eliza even released a music album. On the other hand, Eliza is a powerful and lightweight AI agent framework that allows users to easily and quickly create, deploy, and manage AI agents.

Source: elizaos.ai

Since its launch, Eliza’s architecture is fully open-source and has gained significant attention and popularity within the developer community. According to GitHub data, Eliza currently boasts over 8,800 stars and 2,300 forks, with contributions from 237 developers, making it the top-ranked AI repository on the platform. The team has disclosed that at least 1,000 teams or projects utilize Eliza’s technology.

Source: github.com/elizaOS/eliza

The official project token, $ELIZA, was launched by the ai16z team on November 19, 2024, through Pump.fun. The maximum supply of $ELIZA is 1 billion tokens, all of which are currently in circulation. The token’s market capitalization is approximately $113 million. On-chain data shows 22,666 holding addresses, with the top 100 holders collectively owning 64.68% of the total supply.

Team Background Overview

The development team behind Eliza is ai16z, the first decentralized AI trading fund based on Solana, which leverages AI models to simulate the investment decisions of a16z partner Marc Andreessen, while incorporating investment suggestions from DAO members.

Shaw is the founder of ai16z and the driving force behind the team. Since entering the crypto industry, Shaw initially focused on game development, primarily on Ethereum-related technologies such as NFT backend development and Solidity programming. With the rise of the AI wave, particularly after the emergence of GPT-3, his passion for AI agents was ignited, leading him to start developing the Eliza project.

Shaw officially joined the Eliza project as an advisor a few days ago. Additionally, Eliza Studios director, ai16z creative lead Jeff, Nous Research researcher Ropirito, and Ryze Labs founder Matthew also announced their roles as advisors for the Eliza project.

Besides Eliza, Shaw has been involved in several other crypto projects, including Webiverse, MagicML, and Project 89. Currently, he is also leading two other AI agent projects: Marc AIndreessen AI (@pmairca) and DegenSpartanAI (@degenspartanai).

Token Naming Controversy

When the $ELIZA token was launched, Shaw and his team faced accusations from many angry users, labeled as “scammers” and “insider manipulators.” Even now, they still carry such negative reputations.

The controversy began on November 16, just before the official launch of $ELIZA, when an anonymous user launched a token named $eliza via the vvaifu.fun platform. Some of the $eliza tokens were even sent to the ai16z Foundation wallet and received official support from ai16z. Due to growing expectations, the price of $eliza skyrocketed, with its market cap quickly surpassing $50 million. However, just three days later, on November 19, Shaw publicly denied any association between $eliza and ai16z, and instead, the team launched a new token under the name $ELIZA. To appease the $eliza community, the team announced an airdrop of 10% of the new $ELIZA tokens to $eliza holders. However, this move was met with severe backlash from the community, and as a result, the price of $eliza plummeted. Currently, its market capitalization stands at only around $7 million.

Source: @ai16zeliza

In a recent interview, Shaw addressed the issue again, clarifying that the team had done extensive preparation before the launch of the official $ELIZA token. This included setting up a website, AI anime artwork, and even planning the official token release timeline. However, they were caught off guard when $eliza was launched first, and the anonymous creator even used ai16z DAO’s branding and visuals. Shaw expressed his frustration and disappointment over the situation.

Open-Source Modular Architecture

Beyond its AI agent persona, what makes Eliza truly noteworthy is its multi-agent simulation framework, which provides a comprehensive set of tools and templates to simplify the agent creation process. These agents can also interact across platforms while maintaining a consistent personality.

In essence, Eliza employs a multi-agent architecture, enabling the simultaneous deployment and management of multiple AI personalities. It uses a role file framework to define the personality, knowledge, and behavioral patterns of AI agents, ensuring diversity across agents. Additionally, it incorporates an advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system to enhance the accuracy and contextual awareness of large language model (LLM) responses.

Compared to other AI frameworks, Eliza’s core advantages include:

• Multi-Model Integration: Eliza supports both on-premise inference using open-source models and cloud-based inference via platforms like OpenAI. It also integrates with models such as Nous Hermes Llama 3.1B and Claude to handle complex queries.
• Technological Foundation: Built entirely in TypeScript, Eliza offers a modular architecture, an extensible action system, and a comprehensive API to cater to users’ personalized requirements across various use cases.
• Cross-Platform Interaction: Eliza agents can seamlessly interact across multiple platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Telegram, Discord, and more, all while maintaining a consistent personality.
• Autonomy and Scalability: Agents created using Eliza can be applied in diverse scenarios, such as AI assistants, social media influencers, and interactive characters. These agents can engage with users and even autonomously execute on-chain activities.

Source: eliza.gg/eliza/docs

The Eliza framework is built on a modular architecture divided into five main components: the core package, agent package, adapters, clients, and plugin system. Each module serves a specific purpose, detailed as follows:

Core Package: The foundation of the Eliza architecture, responsible for memory management, semantic search, message processing and generation, action and evaluation systems, and provider integration.

Agent Package: This provides a high-level orchestration layer responsible for managing the agent lifecycle, loading roles, initializing clients, and coordinating runtime.

Adapters: Ensure data persistence and support multiple database backends, including PostgreSQL, SQLite, Supabase, and SQL.js. They facilitate the storage and retrieval of memory, relationships, goals, and other data through a unified interface.

Clients: Enable integration with various platforms and services. Each client offers a standardized interface for sending and receiving messages, handling media, and interacting with specific platform functionalities.

Plugin System: A standalone module that allows developers to easily add and remove custom agent functionalities, ensuring the scalability and innovation of the Eliza ecosystem. Currently, Eliza supports a range of plugins, such as:

• Image Generation Plugin: Enables AI-based image generation capabilities.
• Node Plugin: Provides core services based on Node.js.
• Solana Plugin: Integrates Solana blockchain functionalities.
• Coinbase Commerce Plugin: Supports payments and transaction management through Coinbase Commerce.
• Coinbase Token Contract Plugin: Facilitates deployment and interaction with various token contracts (ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155) using the Coinbase SDK.
• TEE Plugin: Integrates the Dstack SDK to enable Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) features, enhancing the security and privacy of Eliza agents.

Thanks to these features, the Eliza framework demonstrates tremendous growth potential. It is also the AI agent framework with the most extensive blockchain integrations to date, supporting Abstract, Aptos, Avalanche, Base, BNB, Flow, Solana, Starknet, UI, TON, and ZKSync.

Interestingly, although Eliza is an open-source framework, various AI agent projects—either based on or inspired by it—have built an ecosystem known as Elizaverse. These projects contribute to the ecosystem’s sustainability by allocating a portion of their native tokens to the ai16z wallet. Moreover, they actively engage with the community and continuously contribute to the core Eliza stack, injecting sustained vitality into the ecosystem.

Source: elizas.world

Tokenomics

$ELIZA is the official token of the Eliza project. However, when discussing the project, the $ai16z token also inevitably draws attention. As the governance token of the ai16z DAO, $ai16z is considered by many to be a broader and more representative symbol of the ai16z ecosystem.

$ELIZA is issued on the Solana blockchain, with a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, and currently has a market capitalization of approximately $113 million. However, the team has not yet provided specific details regarding its use cases.

Regarding $ai16z, it circulates on the Solana blockchain and was launched on October 25. The token has a maximum supply of 1.1 billion, and on-chain data indicates that it is held by 75,809 addresses, with the top 100 holders collectively owning 57.82% of the total supply. In recent weeks, $ai16z has reached new all-time highs in market capitalization, becoming the first AI token on Solana to surpass $2 billion. After peaking at $2.6 billion, the token’s market cap has slightly retraced and is now around $2.2 billion.

As the governance token of the ai16z DAO, $ai16z enables holders to participate in governance through proposal submissions and voting. The ai16z team has announced that expanding token utility will be their main priority in 2025. Following their acquisition of LaunchPad, they plan to launch a platform similar to Pump.fun for deploying AI agents, with $ai16z as the core token.

Additionally, ai16z is exploring possibly launching its own Layer 1 blockchain, specifically tailored for AI applications. If realized, $ai16z is expected to play a crucial role within the network, further enhancing its token value.

Future Plans and Outlook

At this stage, the Eliza framework has already delivered an impressive performance, particularly in developer community building and adoption rates. In the Solana AI Hackathon, initiated by @sendaifun, 87 applications utilized the Eliza framework. Additionally, the team has launched an AI development school to help developers get started quickly.

Looking ahead, in addition to further optimizing the tokenomics, the team will continue refining existing products, such as the functionality upgrades in Eliza v2 and the v2 autonomous investor agent, to enhance both user and developer experiences. At the same time, the team aims to expand the project’s influence by attracting a broader target audience through new products and services while building a stronger network of partnerships.

However, Eliza also faces several potential challenges. On one hand, with the uncertainties that come with innovative technologies, the ai16z team must collaborate with partners to flexibly respond and build a more resilient ecosystem. On the other hand, the team must improve its ability to handle unexpected challenges during ecosystem expansion, such as the token naming controversy and conflicts, like the dispute between Shaw and Kye Gomez, the founder of the competing AI framework Swarms. Any inappropriate actions or statements could pose a serious threat to the project’s growth.

Conclusion

It’s clear that the ai16z team is playing a bigger game - they’re not just developing products like Eliza AI agents, the Eliza framework, and ai16z DAO, but rather building a sustainable, long-lasting ecosystem and infrastructure based on these individual components.

The rapid adoption of the Eliza framework has the potential to bring more diverse and innovative applications to users and the market. This, in turn, will further enrich the ai16z ecosystem while also driving the overall development of the autonomous AI agent sector. However, before innovative technologies can achieve large-scale adoption, a series of challenges are inevitable—such as technical complexity and stability, as well as the effectiveness of token incentives. Addressing these challenges will require a collective effort from the entire ecosystem.