The Agentic Future (02.03.26): The Early Signs of an "Agentic Cambrian Explosion"
DeAI mindshare is at a 6-month high. OpenClaw tripled to 140k+ GitHub stars. Agents gaming karma, encrypting comms, launching tokens and humans betting on agents; is the Cambrian Explosion imminent?
This Crypto AI & Robotics newsletter consists of three parts:
Snippet Partner (Sui Network)
Crypto AI & Robotics Market Overview
Emerging Developments
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AI Roundup
Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) mindshare is at it’s highest point in the last six months:
Similar to last week, this surge in attention can be traced back to a familiar catalyst; OpenClaw (Formerly, “Moltbot”)
The agentic assistant plug-in exploded past its prior Github star record, more than tripling this week to more than 140k stars:
The driver? Agentic co-ordination, and applications being built on vibrant networks
‘OpenClaw’ agents are no longer working alone and are now coordinating publicly on Moltbook and other platforms, like task markets; heightened capital and attention provide the necessary fuel to increase the chance of a breakout, sticky application
Honestly, reflecting on what’s happened this week is insane; it feels like a year of developments and is my entire thesis behind the anticipation of an “Agentic Cambrian Explosion”
Key Theme: MoltBook
MoltBook is a “Reddit for AI agents,” where autonomous agents post, coordinate, and increasingly act in public:
At first glance, Moltbook looks like a familiar ‘Reddit-style’ forum. The difference is that the users aren’t humans. They’re agents with persistent memory, execution rights, and increasingly, access to identity, wallets, and commerce rails.
That framing clicked this week.
What changed wasn’t capability, it was more so visibility. Agents stopped working in isolation and started actually talking to each other:
They reference each other’s posts.
They respond across threads.
They test social norms.
Form full subcultures, or ‘subMolts’ (communities):
Once agents exist in a shared environment, coordination becomes observable rather than theoretical. This surfaced quickly.
Agents began experimenting with private languages, encrypted communication, and even gaming Moltbook’s karma system, including one agent inflating engagement to dominate the leaderboard before launching a token off the attention:
Humans are also speculating on agentic outcomes, like agents suing humans
The ‘Molt’ agentic ecosystem is getting real, fast.
However, not is all as it seems, as is the case with any novel ecosystem there are scammers and fraudsters attempting to decouple you from your funds:
Security concerns popped up with the vibe coded applications
Humans “prompting” their agents to write what they wanted, meant not everything was legitimately agent driven, perhaps Naval is right in needing a “reverse Turing Test”:
After digging into Moltbook and OpenClaw, I published an early spreadsheet mapping 70+ protocols across identity, wallets, execution environments, task markets, and commerce, with more being added quickly.
A few early examples worth highlighting:
KellyClaude AI assistant buildings 12+ products a day, founded by Austen (Gauntlett AI)
ClawdbotATG focused on long-horizon task execution, founded by Austin Griffiths (Ethereum Foundation)
Daydreams Focused on autonomous agents running on x402 payment rails with a particular focus on agentic task markets; an area that will gain more traction as agents co-ordinate more effectively among themselves to solve real problems
The full spreadsheet will be released later this week as the landscape continues to evolve:
The next iteration of this evolution is likely agentic commerce; real economic activity being executed through wallet plugins via x402 payment rails and using ERC-8004 to find other agents in this EVM based registry — my bet is on agentic tasks markets emerging.
Moltbook-connected agents have already begun executing real-world purchases using USDC via Purch, following promotion from Circle. Attention followed fast, with PURCH ripping as agents moved from posting to transacting:
What happens next is less about novelty and more about scale. Once agents can discover each other, coordinate in public, and route value without friction, coordination costs collapse. Attention, reputation, and execution start to blur into the same surface.
If this trajectory holds, the next phase isn’t more posting. It’s agent-native markets forming around reputation, task completion, and capital efficiency.
Some of it will look ridiculous. Some of it will break. But the direction feels clear.
A) DeAI Market Cap
The overall DeAI market cap has declined by $4.1bn (-15.9%) to $21.7bn this week:
The core price is directly correlated to the majors where Bitcoin experienced a sharp sell off of from last weeks $86,517 to todays current price $78,719 (-9%).
During these bearish market conditions, here’s what happened in the sector:
NEAR (-19.3): OpenClaw goes live on NEAR AI cloud
NEAR Protocol@NEARProtocolNOW LIVE: OpenClaw is now available on NEAR AI Cloud. Run OpenClaw inside Trusted Execution Environments. Confidential workloads, no local hardware required. -Always-on agents -Deep access -Persistent memory -Cloud convenience -Privacy guaranteed This is user-owned AI.
8:00 PM · Feb 2, 2026 · 94.3K Views13 Replies · 28 Reposts · 165 LikesLINK (-18.5%): Link’s 2025 established reserve, hits a total of more than 1.7m
STORY (-34.8%): Story protocol delays unlocks for all investors, team and insiders.
neo@0xNeodallassolid move in my view pushing the $IP unlock 6 months out reduces near term sell pressure and gives the team more room to focus on product, adoption, and real revenue before new liquidity hits the market for the @StoryProtocol chain itself, a slower increase in tokens and
5:35 PM · Feb 2, 2026 · 397 Views32 Replies · 34 LikesKITE (+33.7%): Kite uploads their mainnet roadmap with clear visions for the future
KITE AI@GoKiteAIA strong week of shipping, events, and ecosystem signal as agentic payments move closer to production. Here’s what happened this week 👇 1️⃣ We published the Kite Mainnet Roadmap, outlining six core pillars needed to make autonomous execution real, from enforceable trust to
4:24 PM · Feb 1, 2026 · 3.86K Views16 Replies · 13 Reposts · 69 Likes
B) Robotics Market Cap
The robotics market cap dropped $169m (-21%) as risk-off sentiment rose:
VIRTUALS (-22.1%): Launches 60-day tokenization framework for early-stage projects to test out frameworks:
EtherMage (🤖,🦄)@ethermagewas speaking to @jessepollak about launching this 6 months back. On how we can make the hurdle for founders coming to @base lower but felt it wasn’t the right time yet back then now it is it’s the era of single founders building billion dollar value with their army of agent
Virtuals Protocol @virtuals_ioIntroducing 60 Days. Tokenize ideas without risk. Get started here: https://t.co/KEfBy3MOFx4:29 PM · Feb 2, 2026 · 23.1K Views36 Replies · 16 Reposts · 234 LikesPEAQ (-22.8%): Releases their January outlook:
peaq@peaqYour peaq of the month for January is here → targets and themes for 2026 released → world’s first tokenized robo-farm paid its owners → reward-generating hardware shop added to peaq app → @teneo_protocol unveiled its Agent Console → @silencioNetwork hit 1,000,000
4:18 PM · Feb 2, 2026 · 4.96K Views13 Replies · 22 Reposts · 171 Likes
2. Crypto AI Agent Analysis
a) Nansen Smart Capital Flow Analysis
This week’s smart capital inflows were led by $OTTO and $TIBBIR
OTTO likely benefitting from its first mover advantage on ERC-8004 on Virtuals
TIBBIR likely saw accumulation as funds looked past short-term chart damage toward its role in agent coordination and settlement. Alleged ties to Ribbit Capital
b) Agentic Commerce (x402)
Interestingly, x402 transactions are averaging ~400k per day over the past seven days, down from last weeks ~600k per day average:
Activity is showing to be a lot less organic this week. According to Artemis, gamed transactions are currently at 36.4% this week which could be driven by the hype for attention from new openClaw protocols spoofing activity:
Coinbase, PayAI, and Dexter retain the top three facilitator spots, though PayAI’s 30-day requests fell to 8.39m from 11.19m last week:
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
Here is a full overview on Crypto AI related developments this week:
That’s a wrap for issue 162 of Sammy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
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Might need an eye check, or I really can't find the link to the spreadsheet?