The Near Foundation recently made public its plans to establish a $20 million fund aimed at fostering the growth of autonomous AI agents within its blockchain. This move signals a substantial leap towards the unification of artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized technology, even as debates about the value and trustworthiness of AI agents continue, underscored by fluctuating trends in the sector’s market capitalization.
Within mere weeks of announcing their intention to expand the Near Protocol AI agent ecosystem, the foundation pledged to deploy the $20 million AI agent fund on-chain over the upcoming months. This allocation will be used to support agent tokens that bring innovative AI-driven use cases to the table, such as AI-powered gaming, market-making, and permissionless oracles.
The Near Foundation has underlined its mission to position AI agents as a revolutionary force within commerce and business. The foundation’s focus points include AI-driven agent tokenization, agent-curated order flow, fully on-chain gaming, financial entertainment, and market-maker agents.
In addition to financial incentives, the AI Agent Fund will augment other initiatives like the Horizon AI accelerator and AI hackathons. This encourages budding developers to push the boundaries of integration between AI and Web3.
Ironically, despite these advancements, the token powering Near Protocol has witnessed a decline of over 3% since the opening of Friday’s session. BeInCrypto data indicates that NEAR was trading for $3.22 at the time of writing.
AI agents rose to prominence in Q4 of 2024, recognized by CoinGecko as one of the dominant trends of the past year. OKX Ventures predicts that the buzz surrounding AI agents will persist in Web3 throughout 2025.
Traditional finance giants such as Franklin Templeton have also expressed their views, forecasting a surge in AI-driven automation which will fuel increased investment in AI-related tokens. Additionally, Multicoin Capital has projected the emergence of zero-employee companies and “alpha hunters.”
Outside of the crypto sector, AI agents are creating a splash in the larger tech industry. Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, has predicted that AI agents will evolve into a multi-trillion-dollar industry, revolutionizing automation and digital interactions on an unprecedented scale.
However, despite these promising projections, the AI agent market has encountered hurdles, as reflected in the decline of their market cap and a decrease in smart engagement. Furthermore, a 15% drop in AI agent tokens indicates potential concerns about investor sentiment and the rate of adoption. The slowdown in the launch of AI agent projects underscores these challenges, suggesting that while the long-term vision for AI agents remains robust, short-term market conditions are highly volatile.
The skepticism of key industry players also poses a challenge. A recent survey revealed that most Solana founders harbor apprehensions about AI agents, indicating a divide within the blockchain community about the role of AI in decentralized ecosystems.
