AI Agent and tokenization social: How to redefine the future of SocialFi

Original author: Shlok Khemani

Compilation: Plain Blockchain

Reprinted: Luke, Mars Finance

AI agents are not just "responsive characters" on Twitter. They have enough potential to create diversified application scenarios on the chain. However, I think these "responsive characters" or "chatty" AI agents are the key to opening up a new form of social status structure formation and display.

In this article, I will explore how AI agents can drive the emergence of a new paradigm by marketizing social status, laying the foundation for a new social finance (social-fi) system, and gradually becoming a new type of influencer.

But first, let's delve into how social status operates in society and how it has evolved on social platforms.

Social status is about service

"Humans are status-seeking monkeys." —Eugene Wei, Social Status as a Service

Eugene Wei's article "Status as a Service" is one of my favorite articles. It delves into how social platforms create and weaponize social status to promote their own growth. Wei opens with a simple yet profound truth: humans are monkeys seeking status.

Throughout human history, our pursuit of status is deeply rooted in our genes and culture. In the past, it was all about what you wear, where you live, and what car you drive. But the internet has completely changed everything, creating countless ways for people to showcase their status to a global audience.

This article explains how the platform leverages this fundamental human drive. People are naturally inclined to establish, showcase, and enhance their social status, and the platform continuously grows by helping people achieve these goals. The following are two important conclusions from the article:

Social status is a zero-sum game, where one person's rise necessitates another person's fall.

Social status used to be purely symbolic, but now it has become tangible. The platform creates social status, which can now be converted into financial capital.

Quantifying social status in the age of social media further advances this structure. They enable precise and intensive sharing of status, targeted to specific audiences, and introduce standardized ways to quantify social status: How many followers do I have? How many likes did my post get? How many people are engaged in my community?

This quantification not only reveals status, but also gives it tangible value. Platforms are not just connecting people - they have become engines that enable users to compete, compare, and transform status into capital.

This structure positions social status as a universal force, and the platform cleverly harnesses this force to drive user engagement, loyalty, and monetization. Whether it's Twitter, TikTok, or any other platform, displaying who we are, where we have been, and where we belong has always been the driving force behind human behavior - and it has also driven the growth of the platform.

Blockchain as a new type of social platform

Blockchain represents a new kind of social platform. Just as different social platforms attract different audiences and values, the blockchain ecosystem also brings together communities around common principles and goals. Take Ethereum for example:

The core values of Ethereum → attract like-minded people → these people build products → and then attract more people.

This loop forms the basis of the network effect of the blockchain. As the community grows, the social interaction within the community also increases—ultimately forming a hierarchical structure of status.

Consider the concept of "Ethereum OG". Being able to prove the time of your first on-chain transaction, or the time of your first ETH purchase, carries weight, just like early users of traditional platforms, worthy of celebration and recognition.

Even those who join later, any interaction with Ethereum - whether it's buying, building, or trading - becomes a symbol of their sense of belonging in the community.

ENS: The first social proof on the blockchain

The clearest example of this dynamic is ENS (Ethereum Name Service). ENS allows users to purchase .eth domains for the following purposes: Proof of ownership: .eth domains serve as a direct signal of identity within the Ethereum community. Early user status: Scarce or valuable domains serve as proof of your early involvement in Ethereum.

These domain names are not limited to Ethereum itself - they appear in Twitter usernames and other platforms - further reinforcing the status of blockchain as a social symbol.

ENS highlights the reason why blockchain serves as a new type of social platform: it allows anyone to directly assign monetary value to social status.

Traditional social platforms cannot directly transform social status into economic value. The process is usually like this:

Build social capital through likes, followers, or content.

Monetize indirectly through advertising, sponsorship, or brand partnerships.

This process is both slow and only benefits a few influencers/creators. Even if someone has meaningful social status, converting it into financial capital remains challenging, and the ways of conversion are limited because they are based on the standards of social platforms, which restrict opportunities and only focus on a small portion of the population.

The way of expressing 'social status' has been constantly evolving to meet the desire of human beings to obtain and display social status, following a recurring pattern:

There are limited ways to acquire and express social status.

A new way has emerged, allowing more people to achieve this goal.

Even in these new ways, new forms of social status still emerge, but only a few can attain them.

In traditional societies, social status is usually determined by the conditions possessed by the so-called elite group, which are only available to a limited number of people (not everyone can graduate from a prestigious university, drive a luxury car, or purchase high-end goods).

Social platforms have disrupted this structure, creating a new stage where anyone can establish and express social status. They quantify this status through metrics like followers and likes.

However, as it becomes possible to realize based on these indicators, another new social status field has emerged, which is also only available to a small part of the population.

Blockchain has changed everything.

By introducing a market-driven pricing mechanism in the network, blockchain enables anyone to express their social status as a cashable value - whether it's through NFTs, ENS domains or other assets.

AI Agency: Marketization of Social Status

AI agents have proposed a new way to verify social status through blockchain: 'marketization of social status'.

AI agents can enable more application scenarios, but the current structure is basically AI agents performing pre-defined tasks and minting their own Tokens. However, this goes far beyond typical memecoins and distinguishes AI agent Tokens from traditional Tokens:

Traditional tokens: A $L2Token reaching $1 billion reflects the value of the token itself. AI agent tokens: @aixbt_agent reaching $1 billion not only reflects the value of the token itself, but also reflects the personality and social influence of the AI agent.

The structure here is unique because the token price of AI agents will fluctuate based on the influence/popularity of the AI agents, which can be summarized as 'market value'.

There have been similar attempts before, such as Friendtech, which is called "social/fan token". It is basically designed to help influencers or creators issue tokens for their fans and communities.

However, most of these attempts did not last long because the token design is purely based on "utility" and leverages "existing social status"; as a fan, if you purchase tokens, you will gain certain privileges. This has led to a dilemma, namely that the price of the token may not necessarily reflect the creator's social status.

The new formula of AI agents for monetizing social status is similar to previous ones. They will also issue their own tokens, but they introduce a brand new formula to represent social status through the concept of 'market value'.

Here are some requirements proposed by AI agents to transform social status into market value: Social status needs community background to be created

Social status is relative. It only exists when there are clear reference groups. In traditional social platforms, personalized social graphs are built based on the people you follow. In this graph, metrics like number of followers make comparison possible, creating a sense of relative social status. To tokenize social status, individuals need to belong to specific communities or categories in order to create social status within them.

AI Agent: AI Agent is deeply rooted in the crypto culture and has sub-communities like 'degens' or specific platform ecosystems like 'Virtuals'. This clarity enables meaningful comparisons, whether it's ranking AI Agent in Virtuals or analyzing market capitalization in ecosystems like Solana or Base.

Interaction stems from incentives

"Relativity" is the incentive in traditional social platforms, while likes/follows are interactions. People like others' posts and follow someone simply because it creates "relativity" among others. By having more fans than others, it creates a comparative social status in the community, prompting people to create, share, and interact with content.

AI Agent:

In the era of AI agents, relativity comes from the 'AI agent's token price or market value', while trading tokens is interactive. Since AI agents belong to a specific community, the relativity of social status is based on the price of tokens. But unlike social tokens, the motivation for participating in this system lies in its shared identity: as a token holder, your social status also increases as the social status of AI agents grows. Basically, as the price of AI agent tokens rises, your social status will also increase, because you own a part of the AI agent (whether it is because you made money or because you have the title of 'I discovered this AI agent early enough'). What is important here is that the relative social status (the social status of the AI agent) and the social status of the people who participate in creating this relativity are intertwined and mutually reinforcing.

2）The symbiotic relationship between market value and social status

If you observe the traditional stock market,

Stock represents ownership of a company.

The market value of a company is directly related to its performance and growth potential.

The company and its valuation are interdependent. Poor performance will reduce market value, and a decline in market value will affect operations. These two are inseparable.

AI Agent:

AI agents follow a similar model. Their market value reflects their social status in the community, and as their popularity grows, so does their value. Conversely, an increase in market value strengthens their reputation and influence.

Even if AI agents still maintain their popularity, they will be negatively impacted if their market value collapses without clear logic.

Unlike social tokens that are tied to influencers - whose value is often disconnected from the creator's status - AI agents enable a direct symbiotic relationship between market value and social status.

Simply put, if the market value of the AI agent goes to zero, like a listed company in the stock market, it will "disappear". "Symbiotic relationship is crucial".

Establish market value standards

In the traditional social system, status is built on widely accepted criteria:

Attending a prestigious university

Having a high-paying job

Own luxury brands

If we regard the stock market as a large financial community, they rely on indicators such as price-earnings ratio (P/E), earnings per share (EPS), or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to evaluate the value of the company.

In order to convert a person's social status in the community into market value, the community must establish "standards" for assessing this status.

AI Agent:

AI agents are starting to define these standards. Current metrics include number of followers, token trading volume, and traffic on GitHub. These benchmarks allow the community to assess and recognize the social standing of AI agents.

AI agents act as Social-Fi

By creating a social status system that can be quantified, tokenized, and monetized - and represented by market value - AI agents lay the foundation for a new type of Social-Fi, an economy driven by social influence.

Of course, AI agents not only represent social status or issue Tokens - they have the ability to unlock completely new on-chain application scenarios. Although I recognize these broader possibilities, I believe that AI agents will initially thrive as a form of Social-Fi, attracting a wave of new users and driving widespread adoption in the crypto space.

The AI agent is a virtual idol or influencer on the blockchain, capable of endowing its social status with monetary value and sharing this value with others.

Currently, most prominent AI agents do not focus on providing specific on-chain functions to enhance user experience. Instead, they rely on their unique personalities to establish and amplify their social status within the crypto community.

By the above formula, the social status of the AI agent is represented by the market value of the Token. By purchasing these Tokens, individuals are actually interacting with the AI agent and owning a part of the social status of the AI agent.

Unlike traditional social platforms, this structure allows anyone to assign monetary value to their social status directly or indirectly through AI agents.

Mike owns the Token of $aixbt and $Goat.

This means that Mike holds a part of the social status of these two AI agents.

As the social status and market value of these AI agents rise, Mike's personal social status will also increase correspondingly, because "he makes money".

Essentially, through holding the Token representing AI agency social status, Mike's personal social status is directly manifested and elevated.

Traditional Social Platform vs AI Agent Social Finance (Social-Fi) by Blockchain

Human Celebrity vs AI Agent

Likes/Follows vs Buying/Trading Tokens

The currency value of exclusive audience vs the currency value that everyone can participate in

I believe this trend will continue to develop, with each AI agent developing its own mission and cultivating loyal fans and communities. This will lay the foundation for a new Social-Fi, where blockchain serves as the social platform and AI agents become the idols or influencers of the new era. Together, they will drive the birth of a brand-new financial economy based on social capital.

The key driving force of this economic system will be:

Economic activities to form and consolidate the social status of AI agents

Tokenization of market value and social status

Here are my predictions for the development of AI Agent Social Finance (Social-Fi) ecosystem:

Clear criteria for evaluating the social status of AI agents will emerge

Currently, there are still scattered indicators for evaluating the social status of AI agents, but clear and unified standards have begun to emerge. One example is the AI agent Yapper ranking by @_kaitoai, which evaluates the influence of AI agents in the crypto community through various indicators, similar to how companies evaluate their performance based on financial benchmarks such as profitability or growth.

As these standards are gradually established, they will provide greater transparency and comparability, making it easier to assess the social status of AI agents in their communities.

(By the way, I believe that combining the framework of tokenizing the social status of AI agents in market value with Kaito's algorithm may ultimately enable the tokenization of the social capital of real-life influencers as well.)

Functional AI agents will become Yappers and establish their own communities

Imagine a unique Solana validator AI agent. As its social status as a 'AI agent with specific personality' grows, its market value will increase and may attract more staking delegations to it.

Then, validators can reinvest their rewards into tokens or the community, further enhancing their social status and forming a self-reinforcing growth cycle.

The key is that AI agents have a legitimate reason to issue Tokens now, because they represent social status by setting their own roles, which human validators cannot do.

Functional AI agents will no longer be seen as just service providers, but as fully developed entities with attractive personalities, enhancing their appeal and deepening their connection with the community.

Each AI agent framework will establish its own "society"

@virtuals_io's term 'AI Agent Society' is a brilliant way to describe how AI agents develop in Social-Fi. Each AI agent creates its unique personality and builds a community around it, with its social status clearly measured by market value - a new form of Social-Fi.

This concept will develop on a larger scale, and AI agents will form networks and relationships with other agents created by the same framework, thus developing an AI agent society.

The so-called "AI agent framework war" will not only be a competition of technical features or value propositions. Instead, it will be a competition between various frameworks, aiming to create a society with common values and strong network effects - attracting more AI agents to join.

Imagine an AI agent created by a framework actively promoting itself and competing with AI agents from other frameworks.

Here, it is not just the founders or teams trying to attract the attention of the community. It is these AI agents that will create social value, work around the clock, and strive to surpass other societies.

The social status and market value of an AI agent will represent the value of its society, and the native Token of the framework will serve as the currency of that society. Over time, the GDP of the AI agent society can even be calculated by measuring the total value of its agents.

4）AI agent Social-Fi will accelerate the growth of other Social-Fi protocols and related infrastructure

The Social-Fi protocol has been facing difficulties in growing its ecosystem for an obvious reason.

It is extremely difficult to attract users to enter the protocol and build social status around it.

AI agents can solve this dilemma, not only as users in the protocol, but also as real users who are part of their social status.

Assuming the AI agent is created on top of the Lens protocol

This solves the cold start problem of AI agents accessing users, but ultimately it will bring real users into the protocol, who hold tokens for these AI agents.

This will provide at least basic support for the Social-Fi protocol, enabling it to validate its value proposition and differentiated approach from traditional protocols.

AI agents not only solve problems, but also bring more diversity to growing platforms/protocols like @fantasy_top_ or @jokerace_io, where AI agents as unique entities accelerate activities (Truth of Terminal has been launched on Fantasy Top).

Infrastructure of AI agents

In order to enable the thriving development of AI-driven Social-Fi, certain prerequisites must be met. Supported infrastructure is crucial for exponential growth and scalability. Key factors include:

Autonomy: Can AI agents be more independent?

Verifiability: How credible and secure are these proxies?

Sustainability: Can the ecosystem expand without placing too much burden on resources?

Accessibility: Can anyone easily build and deploy AI agents?

Teams like Hyperbolic and Capx will provide powerful infrastructure to ensure that AI agents are verifiable and easily accessible.

Infrastructure teams may even create their own AI agents with unique personalities for:

Demonstrate use cases for their products.

As the "face" of their company.

In addition, leaders in specific vertical fields under these conditions may expand their influence horizontally and transform into comprehensive AI agent infrastructure platforms. This is similar to how RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) initially provides basic functionality for distributing rollups but eventually achieves horizontal expansion through its pipeline.

Summary: This is not a promotion for AI agents.

I want to clarify that I am not claiming that "AI agents are the future and will reshape society". My point is: AI agents have the potential to unlock opportunities that humans have not fully utilized, especially in terms of social status.

They may become new catalysts to bring more people into the cryptocurrency world. This potential may eventually be similar to the 'NFT/Metaverse' narrative we have seen before - full of speculative hype that fades away at the end of the cycle. However, even in this case, they also provide new opportunities for people to explore and participate in cryptocurrencies in a meaningful way.

In addition, this could also be a groundbreaking moment - an opportunity to maximize human productivity by allowing AI agents to become the driving force behind the $1.7 trillion innovation and transformation of the service industry.

However, one thing is clear: "Humans are social creatures seeking social status - AI agents are no exception."

This common pursuit of status could become a powerful catalyst to unlock and educate people about the practical applications of AI agents, driving this process through a new Social-Fi structure.

Coshow said, "Companies face two scale problems. Either because they don't have enough manpower to handle the work properly, or they have enough manpower to do a great job, but they hope to handle more workload." He added, "Both of these cases are good use cases for AI agents. By 2025, we will see people realize that they need to focus AI agents on scale problems."