The market capitalization of artificial intelligence agents soared by 222% in Q4 2024, climbing from $4.8 billion in October to $15.5 billion in December.

CoinGecko’s “2024 Annual Crypto Industry Report,” published on Jan. 14, revealed that AI agents rapidly gained traction as a category following the October launch of the Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) coin on Solana.

AI agents are autonomous programs utilizing artificial intelligence to execute tasks, often in decentralized finance (DeFi) or as integral components of blockchain ecosystems.

These include automated trading bots and systems that interact with smart contracts.

Solana became the leading blockchain for AI agents, holding 56.48% of the market share with a capitalization of $8.44 billion.

It also dominated social media mindshare at 64.34%, based on data from Cookie.fun.

Mindshare measures the attention, awareness, and engagement a brand or entity garners on social media.

Base, Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain, also gained momentum with projects like Aixbt and Virtuals Protocol, achieving a market cap dominance of 40.57%.

AI agent tokens gained value following a report by Franklin Templeton highlighting their potential.

Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) rose by over 8%, surpassing $3 in early trading on Jan. 15. Meanwhile, ai16z (AI16Z), an AI agent-powered investment DAO, increased 20% to reach $1.40.

The report noted, “We can envision a future where AI agents revolutionize content generation on social media and play an integral role across various industries and platforms.”

The surge in AI agents coincided with a strong fourth quarter for the crypto market.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $108,135 in December 2024, contributing to a 45.7% rise in the total cryptocurrency market cap, which reached $3.91 trillion. Bitcoin posted a 121.5% gain for the year.

XRP and Dogecoin also performed well in 2024, with XRP climbing to fourth place in market capitalization, and Dogecoin entering the top seven, displacing USDC for the first time since 2021.

The layer-2 networks of Ethereum experienced significant growth in Q4, with the top 10 processing an average of 15 million daily transactions, according to CoinGecko.

Base led with 48.3% of transactions, while Taiko overtook Arbitrum as the second most active layer-2 network, thanks to an 85.5% quarterly increase driven by new DeFi protocol launches.

Solana became the top blockchain for decentralized exchanges (DEXs), handling over 30% of trading volume in Q4.

It recorded $219.2 billion in DEX trading volume, surpassing Ethereum’s $184.3 billion.

Base also grew its market share to 19% by December.

Tron was the fastest-growing blockchain among the top 10, with trading volume increasing by 232.7% quarter-on-quarter.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ai-agents-market-cap-surges-solana-leads-2024

https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/2024-annual-crypto-report

https://www.cookie.fun/