Why is Phala suddenly being sought after by the market?

Author: Haotian

Many people are puzzled as to why $PHA suddenly became popular for no reason. To put it abstractly, maybe even @PhalaNetwork didn't expect to become the chosen one all of a sudden. Because there are both accidental and inevitable factors behind the popularity of PHA, it is not something that can be achieved by any conspiracy, but mainly due to three key points: sufficient preparation of TEE technology, the support of a16z, and the timing of AI Agent.

1. The cultivation of Phala Network in TEE technology is the "inevitable" cause of this, why is that?

Although TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) is not a new concept, it has always been a niche in the mainstream technology narrative of Crypto in the past few years. For example, there have been many high-performance chains that compete on the advantages of languages such as RUST and MOVE, and there has also been a wave of ZK technology with ZK as the main theme. TEE and encryption technologies such as MPC, FHE, Blind Compute occasionally appear in the differentiated positioning of individual projects, but they are completely different from the popular ZK.

In fact, in the mainstream chains, the focus is on the efficiency of "block space" usage (MEV, TPS, Gas, etc.), and ZK technology is only applied to the trusted state changes between the most basic layer1 and layer2. The advantages of ZK technology at the underlying level of zkVM virtual machine and the evolution of zkSNARKs data structure have not yet come to the fore, let alone the achievement of a wider Mass Adoption.

The main reason is that previous technical narratives have pursued a pure "on-chain" environment. ZK is the first step of separating off-chain computation and on-chain verification, but the ultimate goal is still to serve the "on-chain" environment. TEE's trusted execution environment is naturally the "pre-processing" process of the "off-chain" secure enclave environment.

It can serve on-chain and is also gradually expanding the results of the new narrative brought by top projects such as Unichain and Flashbot. In other words, without integrating the chain, TEE is definitely a mature technology of pure web2. Combining with the chain, it can bring trusted pre-processing, isolated privacy computation, and other clever uses.

Therefore, those who dare to apply TEE technology to the blockchain field must be able to endure loneliness and have unique and wise insights. In this respect, PhalaNetwork does indeed have a mature solution for TEE, without a doubt;

2. What Phala Network didn't expect was that a mysterious customer named "ai16z" suddenly appeared and adopted his own TEE solution, which was the biggest "accidental" factor in the explosion of PHA.

After seeing AI-Pool's official announcement about AI Agent issuing its own currency, I immediately tweeted a technical interpretation of the TEE solution (TEE enables AI to achieve autonomous management of private keys and sign applications in a secure enclave that is both available and invisible), as well as the historical opportunity that Phala and ai16z cooperation might bring (which is also an excellent entry point for most retail investors).

ai16z's super commercial giant IP position in the AI Agent track is needless to say at present. The use of Phala's TEE solution in AI-POOL indicates at least two things:

Phala's TEE solution has many mature business cases, and it has been selected by ai16z;

Phala's TEE solution will be the first to eat the crab in the commercial grand plan of AI Agent PumpFun, which controls the private key for coin issuance by AI.

Understanding this, naturally understands what Phala can harvest from the phenomenon of AI-Pool, intelligent agent autonomous issuance. A very natural logic, as the AI Agent issuance trend continues to drive, the private key management and remote attestation services provided by TEE will become a "just need" business, while a complete set of on-chain verifiable consensus adapted to the TEE off-chain environment will become a bonus, which can be called the new infrastructure of the AI Agent era.

Therefore, after rushing to PHA, I may not really understand Phala Network, but it is not important, I think I understand better the market potential and incremental opportunities that AI Agent+TEE and AI Agent+Chain may explode.

3. What really gave Phala Network a boost is the currently popular AI Agent narrative. I have pinned several articles on AI Agent narrative in my Twitter profile highlights. New friends who follow me can take a look. The words in those articles repeatedly emphasize "Don't miss it, don't miss it, don't miss it".

Because AI Agent is derived from AI MEME, to the emergence of launchpad platforms such as Virutual and Vvaifu, and then

@aixbt_agent, monolithic AI such as Zerebro, to the emergence of frameworks and standards such as ELIZA and ARC, until old chains like Phala are blown into the wind, everything is evolving rapidly, almost beyond everyone's imagination. Why？

Just one point, because this is a historic opportunity, the main uptrend of the DeFi Summer level. The outbreak of innovative gameplay, the thirst for hot money, the opportunities for information asymmetry, etc. are destined to be "hot and hot" all the time.

That's why I shouted the slogan loudly, just hoping that more retail investors can seize the alpha growth opportunities, and more project parties can get out of the "inability to deliver" dilemma of the old narrative of pure VC coins in the past.

A new narrative tornado is blowing, and its purpose is not just to blow dust (chicken feathers) in your face as it passes by, but to send you to the forefront and become the little piglet who is rich and dripping with oil.

By the way, the implication of this passage is not to worry about missing out on PHA, because Phala is just one of the players in the trend, who first benefited from the trend dividend. Please believe that there will definitely be more opportunities, following the logical and directional evolution that I have outlined.