The rapid rise of the AI Agent sector has once again brought the intersection of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence into the spotlight, with a surge of exciting new projects emerging. Holoworld is one of the most eye-catching among them. Seizing the opportunity, Holoworld launched its AI Agent Market on the Base blockchain in mid-November, helping users quickly deploy AI agents. The team is also working on an AI engine focused on content creation, aiming to build a one-stop Web3 AI + 3D entertainment social network for users, creators, developers, and other ecosystem participants.

This article will explore Holoworld’s current development status, team background, core technology, flagship products, and ecosystem building, in order to assess its future potential for users.

What is Holoworld?

Holoworld is a decentralized AI character market and social platform where users can create AI characters, customize their personalities and appearances, and engage in interactive activities such as AI live streaming and chatting. The platform focuses on content creation as the core of an open economy, enabling creators to monetize their work. According to the team, the Holoworld ecosystem currently has over 1 million registered users and more than 35 million interactions to date.

Source: Holoworld

At this stage, Holoworld’s goal is to become the world’s most immersive AI character agency center. By leveraging its core product, the AI Agent Market, Holoworld aims to enhance the user experience, increase community participation, and boost user loyalty. Meanwhile, users actively involved in ecosystem development can accumulate Crystals and Experience Points (XP), which can be used to unlock more benefits and potential future rewards within the ecosystem.

Team Background and Funding

Founded in 2023, Holoworld was selected for Binance Labs’ 7th season of the MVB Accelerator Program. The development team behind Holoworld is Hologram Labs, a startup based in San Francisco. According to the Rootdata platform, Hologram was founded in 2021, focusing on holographic imagery and virtual digital identity construction. The two founders are Tong Pow and Hongzi Mao. Tong Pow also serves as the CEO and has previously worked at the decentralized exchange infrastructure project 0x and Amazon, while Hongzi Mao is the CTO, with internship experience at DeepMind and Facebook.

In July 2022, Hologram raised $6.5 million in a seed round led by Polychain, with participation from institutions such as Nascent, Arweave, Inflection, Quantstamp, Neon DAO, Foothill Ventures, Yat Labs, South Park Commons, and angel investors including Marc Weinstein (partner at Mechanism Capital), Sam Williams (founder of Arweave), Kalos (co-founder of Parallel), Richard Ma (CEO of Quantstamp), and Mike Shinoda (member of Linkin Park).

According to official sources, Hologram’s current clients include Arbitrum, BNBChain, L’Oréal, Bilibili, Pudgy Penguins, Milady Makers, Anata NFT, Deadfellaz, Cool Cats, Nifty Island, and others.

A Social Platform Integrating Entertainment, Education, and Creator Economy

Holoworld AI, as the flagship product of the entire ecosystem, is an integrated platform dedicated to content creation, interaction, and monetization for users, developers, and creators. On this platform, users can create 3D AI characters, personalize avatars, clothing, props, and other assets. With the AI Agent Market launch, users can also engage in interactive chats with various characters and participate in community voting. Users are rewarded with Experience Points (XP), Crystals, and other incentives based on their contributions to the ecosystem.

Source: Holoworld

Holoworld supports both mobile and desktop platforms, allowing users to log in through various methods, including email, Google, X (formerly Twitter), social media accounts, and wallets. For example, when logging in with a wallet, users can view their asset status on their personal page on Base, opBNB, and Arbitrum.

At its current stage, Holoworld’s core feature is the creation of AI characters. Users can enter the creation page and complete the required information for the AI character, such as basic details, personality traits, skills, and knowledge. Additionally, users can customize the character’s avatar through a 3D module, adjusting assets like clothing and equipment. Notably, to make the characters more dynamic and lifelike, users can select voice tones and train their characters by uploading URLs or documents, ensuring they retain their individuality and evolve autonomously.

Source: Holoworld

Holoworld platform users are classified into three membership tiers based on their spending level: Regular Member, Premium Member, and Elite Member. Regular members are free users, while the latter two tiers require paid upgrades, supporting both cryptocurrency (converted to ETH) and fiat payments. Currently, there are limited-time discounts for quarterly and annual payments, and users will also receive a free Loot Box as an additional bonus.

Source: Holoworld

Different membership tiers come with varying levels of access to platform features, ecosystem participation, and rewards. For example, paid members can create more AI characters and receive more rewards. Additionally, when creating AI characters, paid users can unlock more features, such as role-playing companions and market guides.

As of now, Holoworld supports group chats and private messaging. In addition to interacting with familiar characters, users can also vote for their favorite characters. The team has revealed that they will soon integrate AI agents for platforms like X, Telegram, and Twitch, supporting multimodal social interaction through images, videos, and audio, while enhancing the agent experience with on-chain functionality.

Four Key Technologies

While Holoworld’s platform is still in its early stages and has limited features, the team has ambitious plans for the future. They aim to offer more diverse services for users, such as AI-driven digital asset trading, developer-friendly SDKs and development tools, and a robust ecosystem centered around AI Agents. The team has also hinted that Hologram Labs is preparing to launch an AI Chain to further promote the development of the industry.

Source: Holoworld

Implementing such a wide range of features relies heavily on Holoworld’s technical architecture. Its core technologies include:

• Hologram Mocap: Holoworld has independently developed a computer vision machine learning model and SDKs capable of real-time motion capture using the latest computer vision technologies. Optimized for the web, it runs at 60 frames per second (FPS) and can provide real-time mixed reality compatible with ARKit via various media such as camera video, images, or video clips. Its performance, particularly in terms of mixed reality accuracy and FPS, is comparable to Apple’s ARKit on iOS.
• Holo3D: Holoworld utilizes generative AI algorithms based on stable diffusion and ControlNET to achieve position-aware texture mapping and mesh generation. The platform’s internal library contains approximately 150,000 2D and 3D resources tailored to the Web3/NFT space.
• HoloAnimate: Holoworld’s underlying AI technology uses the Thin-Plate Spline Motion Model (TPS), an end-to-end unsupervised motion transfer framework. It can animate any 2D portrait based on input from video or audio, enabling precise lip-syncing.
• HoloGPT: HoloGPT is a finely tuned hyper-realistic character response model, covering a wide range of use cases, including NSFW content and Web3 data.

Incentive System to Reward User Contributions

Holoworld has not yet issued a token nor disclosed any details about its tokenomics. However, the platform currently operates an incentive system based on Crystals and Experience Points (XP) as core rewards. It has also launched two primary ecosystem assets: Passes and Loot Boxes.

Users can earn Crystals by completing various tasks, such as social media activities, conversing with different characters, participating in collaborative projects, and inviting friends. Elite members also have access to exclusive tasks. According to the team, Crystals are a unique currency within the Holoworld ecosystem, with many potential benefits in the future, such as unlocking exclusive dialogues with special characters and serving as a currency to acquire character equipment and other digital assets in the marketplace.

Currently, Holoworld also has a Crystals leaderboard that is updated weekly, ranking users based on the number of Crystals they hold.

Source: Holoworld

As for acquiring XP, it can currently only be earned through character dialogue interactions. The more experience points a user accumulates, the higher their user level becomes.

In terms of incentivizing users to participate in ecosystem development, besides encouraging active interaction to accumulate Crystals and XP, Holoworld has also introduced Passes and Loot Boxes. The Pass was issued in February this year, primarily to commemorate the launch of the Holoworld platform. It holds no real monetary value but can be transferred.

The Pass comes in three types: Standard, Upgrade, and Ultimate, each with limited or time-sensitive availability. For instance, the Standard Pass is limited to 100,000 units, and users can claim it on-chain by simply registering on the platform.

Compared to the Pass, Loot Boxes are more practical. Currently, the only way for users to acquire Loot Boxes is by upgrading to a Premium or Elite membership. Loot Boxes can contain limited-edition wearable items, which can be used to customize and enhance AI characters with special abilities.

Conclusion

Based on the current developments, Holoworld’s goal appears to be building a one-stop crypto aggregation platform that integrates trading, social interaction, content creation, and AI. While enhancing user experience, it also aims to incentivize ecosystem participants for their contributions to the open economy.

However, the team’s progress seems to be lagging behind its ambitions. Despite launching the AI Agent platform, the functionality remains limited, and progress is slow. It also seems that the project’s original plans have been adjusted to capitalize on the emerging trend. We look forward to seeing further actions from the team and more information being released about the project.