Virtual was a major turning point for me. After years of a painful bear market, suddenly there was this very interesting new meta, an infrastructure for AI agents. At that time, AI agents weren’t widely known yet. I still remember hearing about them because of Goatse Maximus. It was the beginning of the “agent rally” on Solana. But I also remember this one mid-sized project called Virtual, which was being built on Base.

In the early days, Virtual only had a few agents. I can only recall Luna, Game, and Convo, if I’m not mistaken. Then, out of nowhere, all three started to rally. Shortly after, Virtual introduced what we now know as the Prototype Launch, where people could actually launch their own agents on the launchpad, and we could ape in as early as possible.

Waves of new agents started launching there: AIXBT, Vader, and many others. I remember aping into Vader at around a 400k market cap… and yeah, I sold too early. lol

Long story short, there were tons of agents launching, and it felt like a gold rush. Every new agent that launched went to unbelievable numbers, and it just didn’t stop. We basically aped into everything, and everything was up only. I called that Virtual Season 1, which is still the best Virtual season ever.

Then came Season 2. Unlike Season 1, the agents that went up became much more selective. The last major phase was when they introduced their new innovative launchpad, Genesis. It was a fun ride while it lasted, but to be honest, by the end, everything started to feel forced and unnatural. We were pushed to collect as many points as possible just to participate and get a fair share of tokens on the Genesis platform. It was fun at first, but as time went on, everything started to feel heavy and not enjoyable anymore.

In the end, I decided to completely leave the Virtual world. Not because it was bad, but because I just didn’t think the AI agent meta would keep sustaining. It was becoming too common, and people naturally crave something new and fresh. I found that feeling again in Zora.

That’s not to say the Virtual ecosystem will die. I believe some very selective projects will still do well and succeed. But overall, I find the creator meta much more interesting. It feels alive, authentic, and full of possibilities.

Right now, the market condition isn’t looking good. Everything feels scary and confusing. But if there’s one last thing we can still bet on, it’s the fact that Base and Jesse Pollak are pushing this movement so hard. Who knows — maybe this is the last hope we’ll ever get.