Virtual's ACP Grows DeFAI
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Yesterday, Virtual’s officially launched their Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), allowing AI agents built with their framework to transact, communicate, and coordinate with each other.
In other words, ACP allows specialized AI agents to work together across tasks and domains — think SWIFT for agents. Through the protocol, groups of agents, called clusters, collaborate to achieve shared objectives, splitting up tasks to different agents across the cluster to provide more focused precision on particular parts of a workflow, enabling the group overall to become “greater than the sum of its parts.”
ACP’s launch marks one of the most significant launches for Virtuals since its start. It's the infrastructure that lets the vast number of agents launched on Virtuals start to actually come together and coordinate — a state particularly relevant for those building in DeFAI (DeFi + AI), where the vast amount of avenues for strategies proves overwhelming for any one particular agent.
Three ACP-Integrated DeFAI Agents to Try
At launch, Virtuals is directly supporting specific clusters on ACP — one being the Autonomous Hedge Fund. The cluster pulls together a series of DeFAI agents, each focused on different parts of the investment cycle, to support portfolio management for one core agent, Axelrod.
David C May 16, 2025 • 4 min read
While many of these agents were live before, they now come equipped with agent-to-agent interoperability via the ACP, augmenting all of their abilities and feeding into the overall Autonomous Hedge Fund cluster’s performance. Each agent also offers standalone tools that can be used independently — all of which are mapped and discoverable through Butler, a front-end interface that functions as an app store for agents.
Among all those available to test out now, here are the agents that stand out to me in particular:
1. Mamo — Personal savings agent built by Moonwell that’s a part of the Autonomous Hedge Fund cluster. Focused on optimizing returns for $USDC and $cbBTC, with yields of 6.5% APY for USDC and <1% for cbBTC.
2. GigaBrain — Market analytics and Hyperliquid trading assistant live on ACP and a member of the Autonomous Hedge Fund cluster which offers alpha signals, vaults, and one-click trading, as well. GigaBrain’s founder is offering 5 weekly access passes to Mindshare readers — DM him on Twitter or Farcaster and mention Mindshare. First come, first serve.
3. Virgen Capital (by Vader) — an AI-native VC fund cluster built by the Vader team, focused on pre-TGE tokens from Virtuals Genesis launchpad, which frequently see outsized returns on launch. It operates entirely through ACP, led by a Fund Manager Agent (VaderAI) and supported by a swarm of analyst agents handling tasks like background checks, market research, and founder analysis. To participate, stake $VADER if you’re not already doing so — all returns will be distributed to stakers.
The Early Stage of DeFAI
Overall, for DeFAI, we see two types of agents are emerging. Onchain assistants like Bankr and heyAnon serve as natural language wrappers for tasks like bridging, swapping, and rebalancing. Signal/Yield agents like GigaBrain and BasisOS try to identify alpha or automate yield.
While it may seem like DeFAI provides more "novelty" than real edge right now, you have to consider the stakes which make development here slow. In other words, it’s best to proceed carefully when integrating AI into an environment as sensitive as DeFi. Further, blockchains provide massive amounts of training data which needs to be organized and sorted so agents can understand them and truly provide signal, rather than just adding to the noise.
I do believe though that DeFi agents will end up being a primary avenue for how we interact with and navigate blockchains — serving as simplified, (hopefully) intelligent interfaces and terminals.
Also, it’s interesting to see this rise, particularly of onchain assistants, at the same time as heightened experimentation for wallets and the non-stop increase in mobile usage, which overall solidifies wallets as browser, social layer, and gateway to being onchain. A synergy here with DeFAI and, overall, agents that help you move around onchain feels like a natural fit, which can go even further in smoothing out the complexities of DeFi interfaces.
ACP fits naturally into this exploration of what a personal, onchain terminal may look like, letting agents that assist us onchain connect and coordinate, moving beyond just being isolated tools and instead becoming integrated onchain operating systems.
Plus, other news this week...
📣 General News
- Anthropic — reportedly on pace for $4B in annual revenue, beating early-year forecasts
- 🔥 Apple — considering integrating Anthropic and OpenAI models into the new Siri
- Cursor — launched mobile and browser-based coding agents
- Meta — poached top OpenAI researchers with aggressive offers
- X — reportedly planning to let AI chatbots generate Community Notes
📚 Reads
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