The Rise of AI Agents: Opening a New Era of Trillion-Dollar Economy

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the performance of AI models has reached a relatively stable level. The industry's focus is shifting from technological development to practical applications, particularly the application of AI agents, which has attracted widespread attention. However, the limitations of individual AI agents are becoming increasingly apparent, making specialized collaboration an inevitable trend. Against this backdrop, the lack of standardized agent collaboration systems has become an urgent problem to be solved.

The Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) proposed by the Virtuals protocol provides an innovative solution to this problem. ACP standardizes and automates agent collaboration through four stages: "request-negotiation-transaction-evaluation". This protocol enables agents from different platforms to collaborate seamlessly, paving the way for AI agents to operate as autonomous economic entities around the clock.

Currently, over 17,000 agents have launched through the Virtuals platform, marking the initial establishment of the agent ecosystem foundation within the Web3 industry. The introduction of ACP further enhances this ecosystem by providing standardized processes for transactions between agents, similar to the role Stripe plays in standardizing online transactions.

The operation of ACP can be specifically illustrated through an entrepreneurial case of opening a lemonade stand. The management agent Lemo first identifies the various professional tasks required, and then issues requests to professional agents in relevant fields through ACP. Taking poster creation as an example, the entire process includes four stages: request, negotiation, transaction, and evaluation, all of which are automated through smart contracts.

The application of ACP will bring fundamental changes to the agency ecosystem. With ACP, agents can work 24/7 uninterrupted, automatically executing scheduled tasks and receiving corresponding rewards. This model paves the way for entirely new business models, such as always-on on-chain hedge funds and around-the-clock media production factories.

In the case of on-chain hedge funds, agents from different professional fields collaborate through ACP to achieve continuous processing of complex tasks such as market analysis, risk management, and portfolio optimization. Similarly, in the media production field, professional agents can collaborate to complete the entire process from content planning to production and distribution, significantly improving efficiency and engagement.

Data shows that the agency economy has begun to demonstrate its immense potential. By 2025, it is expected that approximately 1 million public agents will be operating on the blockchain, generating an annual total agent value (GAP) of around 1 billion dollars. If this trend continues, the scale of the agency economy could reach an astonishing 1 trillion dollars by 2035.

Nevertheless, the development of the agency economy still faces some challenges, especially in terms of privacy protection. With the gradual maturation of technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs, these limitations are expected to be overcome, thereby further unleashing the potential of the agency economy.

The rise of AI agents is ushering in a whole new economic era, the impact of which will far exceed the scope of what we can currently imagine. With the continuous advancement of technology and the expanding application scenarios, we have reason to expect the agent economy to bring more astonishing innovations and value in the future.