Author: Dappradar
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Since the beginning of 2025, on-chain activity related to AI has surged by 86%, with the number of daily active unique wallets (dUAW) reaching approximately 4.5 million. This has elevated AI's dominance to 19%, just behind gaming at 20%. Considering its market share was only 9% at the beginning of the year, this marks a significant shift.
This explosive growth is not only due to speculation; it reflects a structural change in how users interact with dApps. Whether through DeFi, social agents, or autonomous gaming assistants, AI agents are becoming the new layer of on-chain interaction. They do not replace users but expand their capabilities, automate, optimize, and represent users in interactions.
Data confirms this claim: AI has dominated discussions in Web3 over the past month and is likely to define its next stage of development. This report explores the evolution of AI agents, their use cases, the role of tokens, and the scale of capital supporting this shift.
Key Points
In June, AI's on-chain dominance rose from 9% in January to 19%, with trading activity increasing by 86%, and the number of daily active unique wallets reaching 4.5 million.
As of June 2025, AI agent projects have raised $1.39 billion, an increase of 9.4% from the total funding in 2024.
Since November 2024, 17,124 agents have gone live on the Virtuals Protocol, with an average of over 85 new agents added each day.
Despite a 64% drop in the market value of AI tokens since early June, it still stands at $5.9 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $1.4 billion.
Europe (26.2%) and Asia (21.9%) are the regions with the most use of AI dApps, followed by North America (15.8%).
1. What Are AI Agents?
AI agents are autonomous software programs capable of executing tasks, making decisions, or interacting with users based on goals, prompts, or real-time data. Traditional AI agents cover industries such as finance, healthcare, or customer service, while the Web3 ecosystem is giving rise to crypto-native agents with unique capabilities and roles.
In Web3, AI agents are evolving towards specialization. Some act as on-chain DeFi agents, executing trades, managing yield strategies, or serving as portfolio 'managers'. Others are social agents that represent users in decentralized social applications, manage profiles, and even respond to messages and interactions. In gaming, a new class of native game agents has emerged, with these AI partners trained on game backgrounds, mechanics, or player behaviors to serve as helpful guides or even adversaries.
This is not a theoretical discussion. According to cookie.fun data tracking the agent economy, there are currently 1,748 AI agents active in various environments. Since its launch in November 2024, the Virtuals Protocol, which allows users to create and deploy their own AI agents, has seen over 17,000 agents go live. The actual number may be even higher, as multiple chains are currently prioritizing the infrastructure needed for the creation, training, and deployment of AI agents.
The agent economy is taking shape and developing rapidly.
2. AI Agent Tokens: Utility, Hype, and Capital
In Web3, most AI agents are not launched independently but come with tokens. The role of these tokens depends on the project's vision and can serve various functions. In many cases, they are designed to support community governance, provide access to premium features, or serve as funding mechanisms for development, especially where training and maintaining AI agents still consumes substantial resources.
For others, tokens are merely a capitalization strategy, a way to gain liquidity, reward early adopters, or leverage market momentum. In some cases, they resemble meme coins cloaked in AI, issued around vague agent narratives, lacking technical substance, merely riding on the wave of speculation.
Despite various market noise, the AI agent token market has made remarkable progress. As of the time of writing, the total market cap for AI-related tokens has reached $5.9 billion, accounting for 0.18% of the entire crypto market. The daily trading volume over the past 24 hours is also quite substantial, exceeding $1.4 billion.
However, the recent trend is not optimistic. At the beginning of this month, the market value of the AI agent field was $16.6 billion, meaning it has shrunk by 64% in just a few weeks. This decline reflects broader market conditions, not just attitudes toward AI. But it also indicates the volatility inherent in early-stage sectors, where token speculation often surpasses actual utility.
AI agents are here to stay. But what about their tokens?
3. Top Blockchains Empowering AI dapps
While AI agents often serve as visible layers for interacting with users, executing transactions, or providing in-game assistance, their success largely depends on the underlying infrastructure. Blockchains that support high-capacity AI dapps are effectively laying the groundwork for the deployment, training, and interaction of AI agents.
Between January 1 and June 24, 2025, the following blockchains exhibited the most active usage in AI dapps:
Matchain dominates with nearly 1.9 million daily active users, indicating that AI infrastructure is thriving, driven by social or agent-oriented dapps. opBNB and Nebula follow closely, both exhibiting strong usage related to lightweight to gamified AI services.
Although not all of these dapps currently deploy agents, the development momentum is evident. With the maturity of AI agent frameworks, these blockchains may welcome the next wave of autonomous agents, whether in DeFi, gaming, or social applications.
We may still be in the stage of infrastructure building for the AI agent craze, and these networks are leading the way.
4. Where Do Users Come From?
AI agents may exist on-chain, but their users are spread across the globe. Understanding the sources of user participation helps clarify adoption trends, localized demands, and potential market opportunities.
From January to June 2025, according to Dappradar traffic data, Europe is leading in interactions with AI-related dapps, accounting for 26.2%. Following closely is Asia at 21.9%, then North America at 15.8%. South America has a smaller share at 2.5%, but its user base is steadily growing. Interestingly, 33% of the traffic comes from unspecified or hard-to-classify regions, collectively referred to as 'others.'
This global distribution indicates that AI agents are not confined to a specific region. Whether DeFi agents managing transactions in Asia, social agents representing users in Europe, or gaming partners interacting with players in North America, the demand is diverse and increasingly cross-continental.
As the industry matures, we can expect to see more localized agent behaviors, better language modeling, and even agents with regional characteristics. Currently, the competitive landscape is vast, and the race for user attention is global.
5. Capital Flowing into AI Agents
AI narratives continue to dominate news headlines and funding rounds. While centralized AI giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral have raised billions, the AI agent economy in Web3 is also starting to attract attention.
As of 2025, AI agent projects have raised $1.39 billion, an increase of 9.4% from 2024. This indicates that investors are becoming increasingly convinced that autonomous on-chain agents may become the next frontier. Although this figure is still far lower than centralized AI investments, it is noteworthy that the funding for AI agents is now comparable to or even exceeds that of other Web3 segments like blockchain gaming.
This comparison is significant. Centralized AI investment still dominates, with hundreds of billions flowing into model development, chips, and infrastructure. But in the Web3 space, investors are increasingly viewing AI agents as a new 'primitive' that could reshape how users interact with protocols, navigate DApps, and even automate personal finance strategies.
This momentum is strengthening. If this trend continues, 2025 could be the year that AI agents attract more funding than any other Web3 vertical for the first time.
6. Conclusion
The rise of AI agents marks a profound shift in how users interact with decentralized systems. From DeFi traders and social partners to gaming-native assistants, agents are rapidly evolving from experimental bots into foundational infrastructure.
These numbers support this claim. Since late 2024, over 17,000 virtual agents have gone live. Even amid market downturns, the market cap for AI tokens remains at $5.9 billion and continues to grow. This year alone, startups focused on agents have raised $1.39 billion. Moreover, user engagement is global, with strong performance in Europe, Asia, and North America.
However, challenges remain. Many tokens are driven more by speculation than by practicality. Not all agents can fulfill the promise of autonomy. Moreover, cross-chain infrastructure is still uneven. But with the maturation of tools and the proliferation of real use cases, the agent economy is approaching a new baseline where interactions with on-chain AI are no longer exceptions but the norm.
The competition to build smarter agents, more robust ecosystems, and clearer standards has already begun. And it is still in its early stages.
Related Reading: A Deep Dive into AI Agents: Where Do We Go Next After the Hype?