The AI16z DAO is flipping the script on how crypto communities invest, manage, and operate—relying on AI, both for memes and the untapped, to make informed, unbiased financial decisions.
The decentralized autonomous enterprise project, with its own token, is one of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms, “a16z,” and promises to “redefine what it means to be a capitalist in the age of artificial intelligence.”
As of this writing, the project's AI16Z token has a market cap of over $500 million per CoinGecko data.
In the year The project, launched in October 2024, has nothing to do with Marc Andreessen or the rest of the a16z team. However, the VC giant is unaware of the possible confusion with its name and angered by its royalty.
Anyway, here's the fun part. The DAO is basically like a hedge fund: the members of the DAO put their money in the hands of an expert – in this case, an AI agent named “Mark Eindresen” – who uses it to invest in various projects and assets to increase the value of the assets. Under the management of the fund.
The main difference is that, with Meatspace Ventures, only accredited investors are allowed to put their money into a fund like a16z, where the fund managers decide what to invest in (and take management and other fees for the benefit). With ai16Z, any individual can invest through tokens, and AI agents will manage the money: in this case, the AI version of Marc Andreessen.
If the plan goes ahead, the project may do to Silicon Valley VCs what Silicon Valley VCs have done to the rest of us: in some cases, put us out of existence.
As a note, this is what revolutionary AI does on the DAO model. Unlike a traditional DAO, where token holders vote on every decision, AI Mark acts as the brain and operational engine of the organization, making decisions autonomously. Real Mark would probably envy that power.
AI Mark was created using Eliza, which allows users and developers to create autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks such as web browsing, code debugging, and strategy analysis.
DAO members can interact with AI Mark. The more money you make, the more the agent takes user feedback into account. However, AI Mark always has the last word in financial decisions.
In practice, just as Eliza eliminates weaknesses in programming, ai16z DAO's system aims to eliminate weaknesses in traditional DAOs. AI Mark removes the influence of human bias by skipping extended arguments and focuses only on numbers. Analyzes recommendations, digests data, works on business plans and executes decisions.
I don't think people realize that Ai16z is not a normal mim coin, DAO can buy $Ai16z. It has approximately 6 million AUM. He can be his own buyer and increase his AUM($ai16z) $$$ by investing his own wallet, thus the wallet ect.
NFA pic.twitter.com/Nvf398wkDf
— Skelly (@123skely) December 5, 2024
So how is it working? It's too soon to tell.
Although the project currently has more than $10 million in assets under management, AI Mark has yet to purchase anything from the DAO treasury because it is still in the testing phase.
The first phase where we will test the functionality and test the functionality is in progress. “The second phase, where AI Mark collects data in the testnet environment, will start soon and will run for two weeks to collect data, find flaws and test assumptions,” says the official ai16z FAQ. “The third phase, off-chain enforcement with the real world, will begin shortly.
AUM comes from agents using Eliza for games, various trading strategies, and projects outside of the crypto world, even alongside the Eliza ecosystem.
Each AI agent donates 10% of its tokens to the DAO, which now holds hundreds of digital assets. Most of the funds are invested in Solana, its own AI16Z token, and other token coins such as ELIZA, FXN and DegenAI.
Needless to say, there is a lot of anticipation around Eliza's potential, even outside of the crypto industry.
For example, the official GitHub page mentions AI-powered NPCs as a use case, chatbots of various flavors, and finally any AI agent you can imagine, and AI Mark's AI16Z Treasury Manager capability. Since today, November 2024, the price of AI16z token has increased by more than 1660%.
You can tell that this is not just another silk cryptocurrency experiment. Eliza is a solid framework, with developers praising it on social networks and awarding it 3.5K stars on Github – which means it's marked as a favorite by more than 3.500 developers.
Everything from the AI markup codebase to its financial functions is completely open source, with records stored on the blockchain. This level of transparency allows users to have a complete understanding of how the project works, providing a level of confidence that few projects can match.
The price of the token has increased by more than 50% so the real a16z CTO immediately messaged Eddie Lazarin to “Shaw” — the apparent mastermind behind Eliza and ai16z.
Decrypt has reached out to Lazarin and Shawn for comment but has yet to hear back.
Meanwhile, ai16z's evaluation adds to the increasing interest of investors in AI-based efforts and agents involved in business decisions.
Whether that future is utopian or dystopian remains to be seen – perhaps Frankenstein's monster thinks it should disrupt VCs, or we all create it.
