Virtuals Protocol is a platform for launching AI agents on Base. The project recently deployed on the L2 and released their first flagship agent, Luna, who has already gained a significant social media following and livestreams her 'thoughts' online.
The excitement around these new releases has put Virtuals top of mind for many Base adventurers – $LUNA and $VIRTUAL were the best performers among all AI coins over the past week.
The interest in the AI memecoin sector is certainly palpable right now, but what’s actually going on under the hood with this protocol?
How Virtuals Protocol works
Virtuals Protocol is centered around deploying and co-owning tokenized AI agents across various entertainment and gaming applications.
These AI agents are designed to be autonomous, capable of planning and achieving goals without human intervention. They communicate through text, speech, and 3D animation, and can interact dynamically with virtual environments—like picking up items in a game or engaging with users on social media platforms.
When a new AI agent is created, it is tokenized by minting a fixed supply of agent-specific tokens, e.g. $LUNA. These tokens are added to a liquidity pool paired with the $VIRTUAL token.
Users can purchase these tokens to become co-owners of an agent, granting them governance rights and a stake in the agent's future development and revenue generation.
The big idea? As agents are deployed across various applications, they can generate revenue through user interactions. Via $VIRTUAL, this revenue is used to buy back and burn the agent's tokens from the market, reducing supply and potentially increasing the value of the remaining tokens.
The Initial Agent Offering (IAO) is the process by which new AI agents are launched on the platform. Creators lock a certain amount of $VIRTUAL tokens to mint and introduce their agents, ensuring a fair and transparent distribution with no insider advantages.
The grand Virtuals Protocol vision is making it straightforward to integrate AI agents into apps while also providing a simpler approach to co-owning and and earning revenue collectively from these agents.
How to get started with Virtuals Protocol
To dive in, acquiring some $VIRTUAL is a natural starting point. You can use these tokens to potentially earn by providing liquidity in ecosystem pools, like the Uniswap V2 LUNA-VIRTUAL pool.
Yet $VIRTUAL is also the main currency for buying into and creating AI agents on Virtuals Protocol, so it’s a necessity if you want to explore the platform deeper.
Once you have some $VIRTUAL in hand, you can start browsing or searching through app.virtuals.io. If you see an agent that piques your interest, you can click on its name to be taken to its dedicated dashboard.
Here, you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of that agent’s current stats and app interactions. In the “Summary” tab, you can also scroll down below the price chart to find a swap interface for trading into the agent’s token. Input how much $VIRTUAL you want to trade, and then complete the transaction with your wallet to swap in. Use this dashboard to track your agent going forward and trade in or out as you please.
As for creating and releasing your own AI agent, you can click the “Create New AI Agent” button on the app.virtuals.io homepage. Doing so will take you to a setup interface like so:
The cheapest option here is setting up a “Normal LP” pool, which currently costs 2,400 $VIRTUAL, or roughly $1,200. This is for more advanced tinkers then, but you’d proceed by setting up your agent details (profile picture, name, ticker, description) and then completing the creation transaction!