Virtuals bull return? Learn more about Genesis Launch's new gameplay "bringing in new with old"

Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Last year, we noticed the VIRTUALS Protocol early on, at a time when the AI Agent craze had not yet begun, and the VIRTUAL token had a market value of only around 800k.

(See more at: virtuals.io | AI Agent version Pump.fun is coming: What is it like to send an AI agent token and let AI make money for you?)

The story that followed is well-known to everyone. Virtuals sparked a wave of AI Agent craze on Base. Besides the impressive Virtuals token itself, it also gave rise to a phenomenon token like AIXBT.

But after a cycle, the hype around AI Agents gradually dissipated, and the market seemed to fall into silence; with the emergence and iteration of large models like DeepSeek, everyone felt that the narrative of AI Agents in Web3 was gradually being falsified and was of little use.

Whenever you let your guard down and feel disheartened about the market, new ways to create assets always emerge, and they can lead to dramatic fluctuations in token prices.

In the past week, the tokens of Virtuals have increased by 150%, and in just the last day, they have risen by 42%. Discussions related to Virtuals have once again returned to the timeline of cryptocurrency news.

The catalyst for the rise of Virtuals is undoubtedly the newly launched Genesis Launches event on its own platform.

If you haven't heard about this event so far, you can briefly understand it as:

The way to get the "Priority Ticket Purchase Rights" for the popular new AI agent token by holding $VIRTUAL tokens and earning points.

To put it simply, it is the change in the "new issuance" model.

Each generation of versions brings forth a new deity, and every generation of versions creates assets. New tokens, new stories, new mechanisms, always igniting market enthusiasm.

The various activities and mechanism designs around asset creation can easily lead to the emergence of new trends.

The previous wave of AI Agents on Base was largely driven by Virtuals; does this round of Genesis Launch contain new opportunities?

We also experienced the product, taking you through a quick understanding of the gameplay and mechanics of this Genesis Launch.

Contribution pre-positioning, Zen-like new investment

According to the official description, Genesis Launch is a fair launch platform created by Virtuals Protocol specifically for AI agent tokens.

In simple terms, it is a mechanism that allows new AI agent projects to issue tokens in a community-driven manner. Users can gain priority allocation of these new tokens by holding $VIRTUAL tokens and earning points.

In other words, unlike on Pump.fun, where everyone can participate in the fight as fast as possible, participation in the launch of new tokens on Virtuals is conditional; And this condition, in essence, is to use the pre-contribution judgment to curb the chip grabbing at the opening to a certain extent.

Specifically, on some previous platforms for new token offerings, sniper bots relied on high-speed scripts to purchase low-priced tokens, while scientists could use bulk wallets and Gas fee bidding to dominate most of the shares. Retail investors sometimes haven't even finished loading the trading interface, and the token price has already doubled.

If you want to participate in "new token offerings", you need to understand how to set Gas fees, monitor contract deployments, and even get up at midnight to keep an eye on on-chain dynamics. Ordinary players lack the skills and energy for this, ultimately just watching technical experts reap the rewards while they struggle to get by.

The Genesis Launch looks relatively laid-back and gentle; you don't have to frantically rush your speed during the new listing opening, but instead, it has changed to a different logic:

Want to participate in the new issuance of AI tokens? Then contribute to the Virtuals ecosystem first and accumulate enough points before proceeding.

How to earn points? For example, by holding $VIRTUAL tokens, staking other tokens, or contributing content to help promote Virtuals, etc. The following text will also specifically introduce this logic.

But overall, the effect of the Genesis Launch has simplified "new token offerings" to the extreme.

You just need to hold the $VIRTUAL token, accumulate points, and then stake these two things within the 24-hour new coin presale window, and the system will automatically calculate the share of new coins you can receive.

Detailed Explanation of Points Gameplay

Let's take a closer look at the Genesis Launch point-based new token offering mechanism.

First, how do you earn points?

The official provides three ways to earn points:

Invest in other Agents within the Virtuals ecosystem, which currently has two main categories: Sentient (emotional AI Agents) and Prototype (prototype AI Agent ). This actually means using Virtuals to purchase some AI Agent tokens that already exist in the previous ecosystem. After purchasing, the points are equivalent to cashback, which you can use to participate in the Genesis Launch on the platform.

Buy and hold Virtuals tokens directly. This needs no further introduction; it's equivalent to stockpiling tokens to earn points, similar to a loyalty reward.

Stake $VADER tokens. VADER is also the token of Vader AI, an AI Agent project in the Virtuals ecosystem, and you can get points to participate in the new market by holding the token for staking, which is essentially a support for the Vader AI project. The author believes that this is a leading example of ecological support, because the staking rules are actually not immutable, and other projects may also become the object of "staking and sending points" in the future.

It is important to note that this points system is dynamically updated every day.

Virtuals will distribute a certain total number of points every day to players who meet the above three types of behaviors, according to different allocation ratios, to incentivize their contributions to the ecosystem.

From the perspective of allocation ratio, the weight of point allocation accounts for 75% of the purchase of other AI Agents in the ecosystem; About 20% of the coins are held directly, while the remaining 5% is given to the staking of VADER tokens.

This may also partly explain why the tokens in the Virtuals ecosystem, as well as the VIRTUALS token itself, have experienced a significant increase in the past week or two.

After understanding this points rule, let's take a look at how the new AI token is issued.

The Genesis Launch uses a 24-hour pre-sale window, with transparent allocation rules that prevent monopolies, as detailed below:

Allocation Ratio: 37.5% of the total supply of the new token is allocated for the presale, 12.5% is injected into the liquidity pool (such as the Sentient Agent pool), and the remaining 50% is for project development, finance, and marketing. The 37.5% for presale is the "big cake" that retail investors can grab.

Dynamic Allocation: During the 24-hour presale window, the points you stake determine your allocation share. The more points you have, the more tokens you will receive, but each person can take a maximum of 0.5% of the total supply to prevent large holders from depleting the pool. The system will calculate each person's ratio in real-time based on the total point pool of all participants. For example, 1000 points in a total point pool of 100,000 may receive 1% of the presale share.

Refund mechanism: Have you not used up the staked $VIRTUAL and points? Don't worry, the system will return them to you.

During the "new project" process of the Genesis Launch, it is necessary to stake both points and $VIRTUAL tokens to compete for the allocation rights of the new AI tokens.

A simple process is as follows:

Hold $VIRTUAL: Buy $VIRTUAL tokens and get your "ticket" ready.

Accumulate Points: Obtain a certain number of points through the three mentioned methods of earning points.

Staking Participation: After the new token presale begins, within a 24-hour window on the Virtuals official website, stake your points and $VIRTUAL. The system will estimate the amount of $VIRTUAL needed to stake.

Waiting for allocation: After the presale ends, the system calculates your share based on the total points pool, and the new tokens will be credited directly. Any unused $VIRTUAL and points will be refunded.

Receive or trade: After obtaining the new tokens, you can hold them or trade them on a DEX.

Points are your "priority certificate" for participating in the "new token issuance", determining how much of the new tokens you can receive. The more points you have, the higher the allocation ratio (but the maximum for each person is 0.5% of the total supply of new tokens).

It is important to note that points will be consumed when participating in the pre-sale. Additionally, the points allocated to you by Virtuals will expire after a certain period if you do not use them, which also encourages you to invest points to participate in new offerings.

The Virtuals token itself is the cost you invest when participating in a new token offering. The system will also provide a suggestion for the number of Virtuals tokens you need to invest based on the points you have invested. The logic here is:

The more points you have, the higher the limit of tokens you can receive for new offerings.

Having fewer points means that investing more in Virtuals for new projects is not very meaningful.

To prevent monopoly, a wallet can invest a maximum of 566 Virtuals for new investments, and there is also a 1% transaction tax.

What should you do if you don't have enough points and don't want to buy old assets?

Virtuals has also launched its own Yaps mechanism, allowing players to earn points through content contributions and promotions, providing more choices for players looking to participate in new projects at a low cost.

Launch new assets and revitalize old assets

Experience tells us that when designing mechanisms around crypto assets, we cannot simply think one step at a time; it is best to achieve multiple benefits with one effort.

The gameplay of Genesis Launch is clearly about creating new assets while revitalizing old assets.

In the Virtuals ecosystem, established AI tokens (such as Luna and AIXBT) already have their own market narratives.

As the AI Agent craze cools down, the trading volume and community enthusiasm for these old coins have inevitably experienced a significant decline compared to before.

This wave is driven by the need for points to participate in new asset offerings, and points must be obtained by purchasing existing assets. This design increases the demand for existing assets through the new rules of creating assets, thereby pushing up the prices of the existing assets.

At the same time, the new assets on Virtuals are quietly increasing in price, even though there are not many participants at the moment.

For example, the BasisOS token, which was created through the Genesis Launch, has reached a market value of 5.5 M in just 12 days since its launch, increasing by 40 times from its initial launch.

Under the condition that the Virtuals technology and narrative background have not changed significantly, this "new bringing old" approach at the asset issuance level can indeed stir a certain degree of waves in the recently sluggish market.

And if you look back at the broader environment, you will find that the previously popular AI Agent tokens have all experienced a certain degree of rebound.

Therefore, the narrative of the AI Agent may not have truly come to an end, but rather is in urgent need of new asset issuance methods; the leading projects from the last cycle are also actively engaging in self-rescue, exploring more ways to rekindle market enthusiasm.

Everyone's thinking seems to be quite similar. It appears that ai16z on the Solana ecosystem is also doing something similar, creating a new asset launchpad called Auto.fun, and then through rule design, generating demand for the AI16Z token in terms of economic incentives, thereby driving price changes for the old coins.

When "bringing in the old with the new" becomes the new way for this round of AI Agent platforms, for us, a better approach is to treat old coins as Beta and actively seek new Alpha in the current market environment, which is not overly competitive.