The Loud Experiment
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📸 Market Snapshot: The AI agent sector felt the broader market's pullback this week, with its total market cap dropping 11% to ~$10.3B. The decline tracks with crypto's general exhaustion after weeks of "up only" action and renewed uncertainty around Trump's tariffs.
Despite the retreat here, Virtuals showed impressive resilience, dropping only ~5% while still up 50% on the month. The relative strength isn't surprising given its constant stream of ecosystem updates and launches that keep pushing the platform forward.
Speaking of launches, Virtuals agents continue shipping at breakneck pace.
Degen Capital ($DEGENC) rolled out its KOL Radar, a tool that tracks Twitter account PnLs and surfaces high-quality calls—basically turning Twitter alpha into trackable performance data. Meanwhile, AIXBT ($AIXBT) opened its terminal, letting users get a free peak at how they can use the hub to scan market signals.
Also, Gigabrain ($BRAIN), the AI-powered market terminal, just previewed its Hyperliquid integration, following their first buyback with trading fees.
What's becoming clear is that more and more agents are gravitating toward DeFAI—and that makes perfect sense. The market's appetite for an AI that can consistently provide edges onchain is enormous.
The Genesis craze is continuing to deliver for early participants, too. According to Nikos, there's good reason for the hype: 54.5% of Virtuals' Genesis raises hit 10x+, with 27.3% above 30x and 12.1% topping 50x. That's great stats in an increasingly cutthroat market, so keep your eyes peeled here.
This week, the new Loud project absolutely dominated Kaito's Mindshare Arena leaderboard.
To say it's exploded onto crypto's social scene is an understatement. But most people are still asking the obvious follow-up: what exactly is it?
In short, Loud is a decentralized attention market experiment spearheaded by ultra that plugs directly atop Kaito’s AI-powered “Yapper” scoring system.
Every tweet that mentions Loud earns Mindshare points, and at the end of each week the top 25 Yappers will split 100% of the project's accrued Meteora trading fee revenues, paid out in SOL.
BREAD has a great primer thread that covers some of the finer details here, but the gist is the louder you are, the bigger your payday.
The trading fuel underlying those SOL payouts will be the upcoming $LOUD token. Its Initial Attention Offering (IAO) is slated for tomorrow, May 31st, on Holoworld.
The launch will occur across two phases targeting a raise of 400 SOL, with 45% of these funds earmarked for the launch of the token's Meteora liqudity pool. Once that pool is live, every swap will incur a 4% fee that will be allocated to Loud's weekly SOL rewards.
The big idea, then, is if $LOUD volume reaches major levels, the weekly payouts can be considerable. This would attract more yapping, which in turn would attract more trading, potentially leading to a flywheel.
That said, everything hinges on keeping the conversation around Loud hot. If top creators decide competing for the top 25 reward slots isn't worth the effort, the momentum here could evaporate.
Yet in a cycle where attention and social apps are increasingly reigning supreme, Loud's design feels right on the nose in the current InfoFi landscape. Be sure to track the launch and progress of $LOUD accordingly!
Plus, other news this week...
🤖 AI Crypto
- 🔥 Arbitrum — launched the Arbitrum Yapper Challenge in collaboration with Kaito, offering 400,000 $ARB in rewards over the next few months
- TaoFi — deployed an implementation of Uniswap V3 on the Bittensor EVM in an effort to provide better UX around trading alpha tokens
- thirdweb — unveiled its latest Nebula model upgrade, paving the way to even more advanced AI-powered smart contract analysis functionalities
- Venice — dropped a $27M incentive fund for builders using its uncensored AI API
📣 General News
- Amazon x NYT — signed their first AI licensing deal, letting Alexa use Times content; this comes amid NYT's lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright use
- 🔥 Odyssey — rolled out a demo of its AI world model that streams 30 FPS “interactive video,” letting users freely explore generated 3D scenes in real time
- OpenAI — launched a signup form for third-party apps who are interested in integrating a "Sign in with ChatGPT" functionality
- Perplexity — rolled out Labs, a new workspace bundling code, design tools, and browsing into one spot for building dashboards, apps, and reports
💻 Vibe Coding
- 🔥 Dhravya Sha (resource) — released Apple MCP, giving LLMs access to Apple-native tools
- Ohara (release) — integrates OpenAI's ImageGen to add visuals or enhance app experiences
- jc4p (resource) — demos how he begins vibe coding while working through a Word Connection mini game (pt.2 here)
📚 Reads
- Shoshannah Tekofsky — Season Recap: Agents Raise $2,000
- Shyamal Anadkat — Age of the Agent Orchestrator
- Variant Fund — Recap of AI x Crypto Demo Night 2
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On this week’s AI Rollup, David, Ejaaz, and Josh wrestle with a $6.5 billion cliff-hanger: will Johnny Ive’s pocket-sized AI make the iPhone look ancient by 2027?
The Limitless trio dig into OpenAI’s hardware moonshot and into the logistics of mass producing a device that listens, sees, and thinks for you.
They also catch up on Anthropic’s Claude 4 threatening to call the cops on crooked users, OpenAI’s 03 model refusing to power down, and a squad of autonomous agents that binged cat videos, planned OnlyFans hustles, and somehow still raised cash for charity.
Catch up on all the latest intrigues by diving into the full show! 👇