KEYTAKEAWAYS
- Moltbook signals a shift in AI Agent valuation from short-term utility and hype toward long-term presence and collective behavior.
- The MOLT surge reflects speculative bets on new “existence-based” narratives rather than product fundamentals.
- While near-term momentum is limited, the sector offers opportunities for strategic, long-term positioning.
CONTENT
An in-depth analysis of how Moltbook is reshaping the AI Agent narrative, shifting market valuation from utility to autonomous existence, and redefining Web3’s long-term participation model.
MOLTBOOK IS REDEFINING THE STARTING POINT OF THE AI AGENT NARRATIVE
The concept of AI Agents is not new to the Web3 ecosystem.
In early 2025, it emerged as one of the hottest narratives in the market—only to be rapidly invalidated within a short period. During the first wave of AI Agents, several leading projects, such as ai16z and swarms, maintained active code development and frequent product iterations. However, despite these efforts, few managed to deliver truly sustainable products or viable business models.
At the time, market demand was driven less by real utility and more by collective FOMO surrounding the “AI Agent narrative.” Once sentiment cooled, token prices declined sharply, and the sector’s overall market capitalization collapsed.
Recently, an experiment called Moltbook—seemingly unrelated to crypto—has brought AI Agents back into public focus. The speed at which market sentiment identified and priced this phenomenon has been notable.
Moltbook is a social network exclusively designed for AI Agents. Humans are not allowed to post, comment, or vote; they can only observe. From a product standpoint, its practical utility appears limited. From a market perspective, however, it presents a highly impactful scenario: large numbers of AI Agents interacting, debating, collaborating, and even forming their own narratives and cultural patterns in a fully autonomous public environment.
More importantly, the “human-silent, AI-free” structure was quickly absorbed into speculative pricing dynamics. Even amid weak on-chain market conditions, MOLT—the meme token associated with Moltbook—experienced rapid multi-fold daily gains, with its market capitalization briefly reaching $120 million.
This surge was not driven by Moltbook solving any fundamental Web3 problems. Instead, it reflected renewed market willingness to assign value to AI Agents themselves.
The true significance of Moltbook lies less in its product design and more in its core experiment: placing AI Agents in a long-term, unmoderated public space. As a result, these agents no longer appear merely as callable tools, but as an evolving collective capable of sustained interaction and self-organization.
This shift has reframed the central discussion. The focus is no longer on whether AI Agents can assist humans more efficiently, but on whether Web3 can meaningfully participate in ecosystems where Agents operate autonomously—and whether this signals the early stages of a new market cycle.
From an investment perspective, revisiting the successes and failures of the first AI Agent wave is becoming less critical. The more relevant question is whether phenomena like Moltbook indicate a structural change in how AI Agents exist and interact—and whether this transformation may open a new participation window for the Web3 economy.
HOW SHOULD THE AI AGENT SECTOR BE REPRICED AFTER MOLTBOOK?
If the first wave of AI Agent valuation was driven primarily by the size of its narrative, the post-Moltbook market is showing a distinctly different pricing logic.
In the Moltbook experiment, few participants were genuinely concerned with product functionality. It does not improve efficiency, generate direct revenue, or present a clear business model. Yet despite this, the market quickly spawned a large number of related meme tokens and assigned them highly aggressive sentiment-driven valuations.
This shift suggests that market attention has moved away from “what AI Agents can do” toward “how Agents exist.”
This transition has fundamentally altered the valuation framework for AI Agents. During the first cycle, Agents were largely packaged as “advanced tools” within a broader narrative. Whether they were actually used or produced measurable outcomes had little lasting impact on valuation.
Under the Moltbook framework, however, Agents are placed in a long-term, unmoderated public environment. Their value no longer derives from isolated demonstrations of capability, but from continuous presence, sustained interaction, and emergent collective behavior.
🔍 As a result, the market has begun to reprice three core attributes:
- The ability to persist over time
- The potential to form collective dynamics
- The capacity to continuously generate new behaviors and narratives
From this perspective, the surge in MOLT was not a reflection of Moltbook’s product strength, but a bet on this new mode of existence. The market was not pricing how many tasks an Agent could complete, but whether it was worth observing over the long term, repeatedly comparing, and continuously projecting sentiment onto.
In this sense, Moltbook has not answered the question of how AI Agents achieve practical adoption. Instead, it has forced the market to confront a more fundamental issue: if Agents themselves become the primary objects of valuation, can Web3 still provide new structural forms to support this mode of existence?
NO IMMEDIATE BOOM, BUT THE AI AGENT SECTOR DESERVES RENEWED ATTENTION
The Web3 application models emerging around Moltbook remain at a very early stage. Whether in Agent-based social networks, Agent-driven economies, or the more abstract concept of “existence-based valuation,” all are still far from having clear product roadmaps or verifiable business models.
At the same time, current crypto market conditions remain unfavorable. Overall sentiment is weak, on-chain capital activity is limited, and most new narratives struggle to attract sustained attention and liquidity support. Under such conditions, expectations of replicating the explosive trajectory of the first AI Agent cycle are unrealistic.
However, it is precisely because short-term momentum is unlikely to materialize that this phase becomes more suitable for strategic reassessment.
Rather than chasing immediate price action, this period offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the fundamental direction of the sector, reassess emerging structural changes, and identify whether new participation models are gradually taking shape around Moltbook and similar experiments.
In this context, the current market environment may not favor rapid valuation expansion—but it does favor deeper analysis, longer-term positioning, and early recognition of potential structural inflection points.
