Every crypto investor dreams of a 10x. It is the goal that pulls people into this market in the first place. But crypto has one rule that never changes: high risk comes with high return.

To chase a 10x, most people end up betting on meme gambles or shitcoins. Many of these are pure pump-and-dump plays, especially creator coins, where the lifetime of a project can sometimes be measured in hours.

In reality, getting a 10x is not just luck. About 80% depends on whether you choose the right project. The remaining 20% comes from market conditions, your ability to hold through volatility, and a bit of timing and luck.

There is one sector where 10x stories happen more often than most people expect, it has a product, real use cases, and can be held as an investment. This sector has proven itself through multiple growth waves over the past year. That sector is agent tokens in the Virtuals ecosystem. This article is written to help you understand how to find strong projects inside this ecosystem.

Note: This article focuses on methods and examples. It is not an investment call.

Fundamental analysis is always the foundation. Any project that wants to grow strongly must be built on a solid base. There are many ways to do fundamental analysis, but in this article, I will focus only on three core criteria that matter the most.

Start with the founder and the core team. A clean founder profile matters a lot. No past drama, no shady history. Ideally, this is not their first project. Founders who have built before usually have better experience, stronger networks, and a clearer vision.

Good teams stay active. They regularly ship new features, update the roadmap, and talk openly about the product on social media. Silence is often a red flag.

There are founders or teams with a history of pumping old projects hard, even when the product itself was not impressive. When they prepare to launch a new project, the hype is usually huge.

What you need to see clearly is this: their real product is The New Token and the price action. The product they show you is often just a story to help them sell the token.

With teams like this, the token is not meant for long term holding. You need to be very clear about your entry, know when you jump in, and set a clear profit target so you know exactly when to exit.

Also check incentive alignment:

• How much supply does the team control?

• Are their tokens locked long-term?

• Do founders benefit more from building the product or from short-term price appreciation?

Misaligned incentives often lead to soft rugs rather than hard rugs.

Tokenomics can make or break a 10x story.

Projects that have already done TGE, finished vesting, and no longer suffer from inflation are usually stronger long term. If the token has buyback or burn mechanisms that reduce supply, that is a big plus.

On the other hand, if the project has launched but the team or early investors are still vesting tokens, that is a downside. Ongoing vesting creates constant sell pressure, even if the product is good. In most cases, it is better to wait or look for another opportunity.

In the Virtuals ecosystem, this issue is partially addressed by the launch design itself.

The last three launchpad models, Pegasus, Unicorn, and Titan, all launched with a fixed FDV. This means early investors already know the valuation from day one, reducing uncertainty around initial pricing.

That said, no matter how strong the product is, if inflation remains above ~20% per year, sustained downside pressure is only a matter of time.

A strong product always shows real signals.

Look for projects with a strong community, real users, and real revenue. Not just words. You should be able to see data on chain, on dashboards like Dune, or through clear usage metrics.

Narrative fit is critical. The product must match the current market narrative. Look at how products in the x402 sector pumped hard during the growth wave in October 2025 to understand how powerful narratives really are. Some builders even had to pivot their projects into this sector just to jump into the narrative and catch the flow of money, for example: $EIGEN,$LINK...

Crypto moves fast, and there are too many projects competing for attention. If a project builds outside the main narrative, it is very easy for it to flop and struggle to attract capital.

Be careful with projects that only build a website, add a 'join waitlist' button, then focus on social hype, community farming, and fundraising. These are usually not high quality signals, should not hold for long-term.

Ask one critical question:

What makes this agent hard to replace?

• Can it be easily copied?

• Does it have proprietary data, workflow depth, or user lock-in?

• If five similar agents launch tomorrow, why would users stick with this one?

Without a moat, 10x moves are usually narrative-driven and short-lived.

With Virtuals agent tokens, I will not focus on technical analysis. Most of these projects have small market caps and low liquidity, so candle patterns are often unreliable and can be easily broken by just a moderate buy or sell.

Because of that, in this article, besides fundamental analysis, I will focus mainly on onchain analysis. Below are the factors you should care about.

One key reason why agent tokens can pump so hard is because they are all paired with $VIRTUAL. As you may know, ETH is often used as the main quote token across many chains, and every move in ETH directly affects most altcoin prices. Think of VIRTUAL as a smaller version of $ETH, with a much smaller market size.

VIRTUAL has deep liquidity, is listed on many major exchanges, and its price is well maintained. When VIRTUAL starts to move up, agent tokens paired with it usually move up as well.

This LP structure gives agent tokens a huge upside window. Just look at the x402 wave in October 2025 as a clear example: just in one week, when VIRTUAL pump 159%, $CAP Capminal has increased 1073%.

There are special cases where tokens like $AIN or $VPAY have pumped up to 5000% from the bottom.

But it is fair to admit that risks still exist when the market corrects. When agent tokens get sold off, VIRTUAL can also drop hard due to indirect selling pressure. However, this model has been live for more than a year and a half, and Virtuals team has already been through multiple cycles like this.

As the ecosystem grows bigger and the market cap becomes larger, price movements will gradually become more stable and less volatile.

Next, to pick the right projects, you need to build a solid watchlist and track price, market cap, and volume on a regular basis. Projects that maintain healthy trading volume for months and show positive price behavior like sideways accumulation followed by pumps clearly attract attention. This is a strong signal that they can match current narratives and catch incoming capital flows.

To find projects to add to your watchlist, start by following the weekly updates from the Virtuals Ecosystem and note which projects stay active week after week. Track social media and see which projects OGs talk about consistently, then add all of them to your watchlist.

Hot AI sectors like x402, DeFAI, and Robotics also have strong upside potential in 2026. Any project that fits these narratives should be on your radar and added to your watchlist early.

Below is the example watchlist that I built (NFA).

For Virtuals agent tokens, volume is king. If you do not know yet, the fee structure of agent tokens is set up like this.

• LP fee is 0.3% paid to liquidity providers on Uniswap V2 (that's already locked for 10 years). It will make the LP thicker if the volume gradually accumulates over time.

• Tax fee is 1%, with 0.7% going to the agent owner and 0.3% going to the Virtuals Treasury, swapped and paid in cbBTC.

This means when you swap $1000 worth of any agent token, you pay around $13 in total fees.

Because of this, a strong project is one with real trading demand and consistently high volume. High volume means the team earns stable income from LP trading fees. In other words, the token itself is also a product within the Virtuals agent ecosystem, because it generates revenue through trading activity.

That said, a truly good project still needs real revenue from its core product. The ideal case is when product revenue is higher than trading fee revenue. This creates financial stability and gives the token a much stronger foundation to grow.

When reviewing your watchlist, volume should be the top priority. If you see a project doing $1M dollars in 24 hour volume, it means the team earns around $7,000 in one day from trading fees alone. If that volume can be maintained for a full month, monthly revenue would reach about $210,000. That is a very strong signal.

Always ask:

Who is the buyer at higher prices?

• Ecosystem users?

• Other builders?

• Retail chasing narrative?

• Funds positioning early?

If there is no clear next buyer, 10x upside becomes limited.

Bubblemap is a free tool and more than good enough to check onchain holders. You should use it to see which whale clusters are holding how much of the supply. Decentralization is always a top priority when evaluating holders. If no whale cluster holds more than 5% of the total supply, the project is well decentralized and it becomes much harder for a single entity to manipulate the price.

Of course, there are cases where whales or even the project team withdraw funds from CEXs into clean wallets to avoid tracking and accumulate quietly. In many cases, this actually shows they want to clean up the data and prepare to push the token.

If you find a project where a big KOL is holding around 1 to 2% of the supply, check that KOL’s profile. If they are the type who actively supports projects, they will likely shill their bag. That is usually a positive signal.

You cannot hold to a 10x if you check your portfolio every hour. You will sell long before the real growth happens. Holding is a skill that needs to be trained, and it cannot be mastered overnight.

Hold skill alone could deserve a full article by itself. As CZ once said, “If you can’t hold, you won’t be rich”. After reviewing all the criteria, the final thing you need to do is simple: hold to target.

But you should know when the thesis breaks:

• Narrative fades

• Volume collapses

• Team stops shipping

• Ecosystem momentum slows

When those signals appear, reassess. Holding blindly is not conviction, it is risk.

Every crypto investor dreams of a 10x. It is the goal that pulls people into this market in the first place. But crypto has one rule that never changes: high risk comes with high return.

To chase a 10x, most people end up betting on meme gambles or shitcoins. Many of these are pure pump-and-dump plays, especially creator coins, where the lifetime of a project can sometimes be measured in hours.

In reality, getting a 10x is not just luck. About 80% depends on whether you choose the right project. The remaining 20% comes from market conditions, your ability to hold through volatility, and a bit of timing and luck.

There is one sector where 10x stories happen more often than most people expect, it has a product, real use cases, and can be held as an investment. This sector has proven itself through multiple growth waves over the past year. That sector is agent tokens in the Virtuals ecosystem. This article is written to help you understand how to find strong projects inside this ecosystem.

Note: This article focuses on methods and examples. It is not an investment call.

Fundamental analysis is always the foundation. Any project that wants to grow strongly must be built on a solid base. There are many ways to do fundamental analysis, but in this article, I will focus only on three core criteria that matter the most.

Start with the founder and the core team. A clean founder profile matters a lot. No past drama, no shady history. Ideally, this is not their first project. Founders who have built before usually have better experience, stronger networks, and a clearer vision.

Good teams stay active. They regularly ship new features, update the roadmap, and talk openly about the product on social media. Silence is often a red flag.

There are founders or teams with a history of pumping old projects hard, even when the product itself was not impressive. When they prepare to launch a new project, the hype is usually huge.

What you need to see clearly is this: their real product is The New Token and the price action. The product they show you is often just a story to help them sell the token.

With teams like this, the token is not meant for long term holding. You need to be very clear about your entry, know when you jump in, and set a clear profit target so you know exactly when to exit.

Also check incentive alignment:

• How much supply does the team control?

• Are their tokens locked long-term?

• Do founders benefit more from building the product or from short-term price appreciation?

Misaligned incentives often lead to soft rugs rather than hard rugs.

Tokenomics can make or break a 10x story.

Projects that have already done TGE, finished vesting, and no longer suffer from inflation are usually stronger long term. If the token has buyback or burn mechanisms that reduce supply, that is a big plus.

On the other hand, if the project has launched but the team or early investors are still vesting tokens, that is a downside. Ongoing vesting creates constant sell pressure, even if the product is good. In most cases, it is better to wait or look for another opportunity.

In the Virtuals ecosystem, this issue is partially addressed by the launch design itself.

The last three launchpad models, Pegasus, Unicorn, and Titan, all launched with a fixed FDV. This means early investors already know the valuation from day one, reducing uncertainty around initial pricing.

That said, no matter how strong the product is, if inflation remains above ~20% per year, sustained downside pressure is only a matter of time.

A strong product always shows real signals.

Look for projects with a strong community, real users, and real revenue. Not just words. You should be able to see data on chain, on dashboards like Dune, or through clear usage metrics.

Narrative fit is critical. The product must match the current market narrative. Look at how products in the x402 sector pumped hard during the growth wave in October 2025 to understand how powerful narratives really are. Some builders even had to pivot their projects into this sector just to jump into the narrative and catch the flow of money, for example: $EIGEN,$LINK...

Crypto moves fast, and there are too many projects competing for attention. If a project builds outside the main narrative, it is very easy for it to flop and struggle to attract capital.

Be careful with projects that only build a website, add a 'join waitlist' button, then focus on social hype, community farming, and fundraising. These are usually not high quality signals, should not hold for long-term.

Ask one critical question:

What makes this agent hard to replace?

• Can it be easily copied?

• Does it have proprietary data, workflow depth, or user lock-in?

• If five similar agents launch tomorrow, why would users stick with this one?

Without a moat, 10x moves are usually narrative-driven and short-lived.

With Virtuals agent tokens, I will not focus on technical analysis. Most of these projects have small market caps and low liquidity, so candle patterns are often unreliable and can be easily broken by just a moderate buy or sell.

Because of that, in this article, besides fundamental analysis, I will focus mainly on onchain analysis. Below are the factors you should care about.

One key reason why agent tokens can pump so hard is because they are all paired with $VIRTUAL. As you may know, ETH is often used as the main quote token across many chains, and every move in ETH directly affects most altcoin prices. Think of VIRTUAL as a smaller version of $ETH, with a much smaller market size.

VIRTUAL has deep liquidity, is listed on many major exchanges, and its price is well maintained. When VIRTUAL starts to move up, agent tokens paired with it usually move up as well.

This LP structure gives agent tokens a huge upside window. Just look at the x402 wave in October 2025 as a clear example: just in one week, when VIRTUAL pump 159%, $CAP Capminal has increased 1073%.

There are special cases where tokens like $AIN or $VPAY have pumped up to 5000% from the bottom.

But it is fair to admit that risks still exist when the market corrects. When agent tokens get sold off, VIRTUAL can also drop hard due to indirect selling pressure. However, this model has been live for more than a year and a half, and Virtuals team has already been through multiple cycles like this.

As the ecosystem grows bigger and the market cap becomes larger, price movements will gradually become more stable and less volatile.

Next, to pick the right projects, you need to build a solid watchlist and track price, market cap, and volume on a regular basis. Projects that maintain healthy trading volume for months and show positive price behavior like sideways accumulation followed by pumps clearly attract attention. This is a strong signal that they can match current narratives and catch incoming capital flows.

To find projects to add to your watchlist, start by following the weekly updates from the Virtuals Ecosystem and note which projects stay active week after week. Track social media and see which projects OGs talk about consistently, then add all of them to your watchlist.

Hot AI sectors like x402, DeFAI, and Robotics also have strong upside potential in 2026. Any project that fits these narratives should be on your radar and added to your watchlist early.

Below is the example watchlist that I built (NFA).

For Virtuals agent tokens, volume is king. If you do not know yet, the fee structure of agent tokens is set up like this.

• LP fee is 0.3% paid to liquidity providers on Uniswap V2 (that's already locked for 10 years). It will make the LP thicker if the volume gradually accumulates over time.

• Tax fee is 1%, with 0.7% going to the agent owner and 0.3% going to the Virtuals Treasury, swapped and paid in cbBTC.

This means when you swap $1000 worth of any agent token, you pay around $13 in total fees.

Because of this, a strong project is one with real trading demand and consistently high volume. High volume means the team earns stable income from LP trading fees. In other words, the token itself is also a product within the Virtuals agent ecosystem, because it generates revenue through trading activity.

That said, a truly good project still needs real revenue from its core product. The ideal case is when product revenue is higher than trading fee revenue. This creates financial stability and gives the token a much stronger foundation to grow.

When reviewing your watchlist, volume should be the top priority. If you see a project doing $1M dollars in 24 hour volume, it means the team earns around $7,000 in one day from trading fees alone. If that volume can be maintained for a full month, monthly revenue would reach about $210,000. That is a very strong signal.

Always ask:

Who is the buyer at higher prices?

• Ecosystem users?

• Other builders?

• Retail chasing narrative?

• Funds positioning early?

If there is no clear next buyer, 10x upside becomes limited.

Bubblemap is a free tool and more than good enough to check onchain holders. You should use it to see which whale clusters are holding how much of the supply. Decentralization is always a top priority when evaluating holders. If no whale cluster holds more than 5% of the total supply, the project is well decentralized and it becomes much harder for a single entity to manipulate the price.

Of course, there are cases where whales or even the project team withdraw funds from CEXs into clean wallets to avoid tracking and accumulate quietly. In many cases, this actually shows they want to clean up the data and prepare to push the token.

If you find a project where a big KOL is holding around 1 to 2% of the supply, check that KOL’s profile. If they are the type who actively supports projects, they will likely shill their bag. That is usually a positive signal.

You cannot hold to a 10x if you check your portfolio every hour. You will sell long before the real growth happens. Holding is a skill that needs to be trained, and it cannot be mastered overnight.

Hold skill alone could deserve a full article by itself. As CZ once said, “If you can’t hold, you won’t be rich”. After reviewing all the criteria, the final thing you need to do is simple: hold to target.

But you should know when the thesis breaks:

• Narrative fades

• Volume collapses

• Team stops shipping

• Ecosystem momentum slows

When those signals appear, reassess. Holding blindly is not conviction, it is risk.