This is part of the Lightspeed newsletter. To read the full editions, Subscribe.

Eliza Labs, the team behind the ai16z AI agent platform, has entered into a research partnership agreement with Stanford University's Future of Cryptocurrency Initiative, Eliza Labs announced this morning.

Over the past two months, the so-called Artificial intelligence agents Which generally associates chatbots with meme currencies Race To hundreds of millions of market capitalization, including ai16z. By funding a lab at Stanford University, ai16z is trying to do what all successful memecoin-related projects should do – keep the joke going.

“This is the funniest thing possible,” Xu, the anonymous founder of Eliza Labs, told me in a phone call after I said I found the memecoin project and the research university association amusing. “If I could think of the funniest thing we could do, it would definitely be setting up a lab at Stanford.”

Eliza Labs is the entity behind ai16z, a DAO whose assets are set to trade by an independent AI bot, jokingly named Marc AIndreessen after a16z's real co-founder. Marc Andreessen's AI version is built using the Eliza framework, which allows agents to interact on social media, browse the web, and trade tokens. This AI agent technology is interesting at the moment: ai16z's GitHub repository has already been forked about 1,400 times.

Once the platform goes public, AI Marc will create a so-called trust market where he rates DAO members based on how good their advice is.

The Future of Cryptocurrency Initiative at Stanford University brings together a number of Stanford professors to produce cryptocurrency-adjacent research and “promote the success of public and private cryptocurrencies and their many use cases.” The research lab is funded by members of the cryptocurrency industry such as Eliza Labs, who must pay $250,000 for a Tier 1 membership or $75,000 for a Tier 2 membership.

Jonathan Padilla, CEO of Snickerdoodle and an FDCI advisor who co-founded the lab, said Eliza Labs gave Stanford a “larger grant” of more than $250,000, though he declined to give a specific number. With the associated ai16z token trading at a market cap of over $800 million, Eliza Labs was clearly able to foot the bill.

Stanford researchers will develop trust mechanisms for artificial intelligence agents, known to sometimes hallucinate, and investigate how the agents coordinate with each other and control each other.

Padilla added that Stanford University professors David Mazier and Dan Bonnet will lead the lab along with a group of graduate student researchers.

“At FDCI, we have been working on technology that dramatically increases the (computational) power of the blockchain. AI16Z/Eliza are at the forefront of applying AI agents to financial problems. We are excited about the possibilities of increasing the onchain computational power available for their applications,” Mazier said in a letter to Blockworks. ".

The Eliza Labs partnership at Stanford University didn't come cheap, but with the AI ​​customer field currently locked in an arms race for attention, Shaw and the rest of DAO's leadership clearly found the partnership worthwhile. The founder also hopes the partnership will produce some good science.

“We are looking for PhDs to blow our minds and expand the scope of what is possible with the technology we unlock,” Shaw said.

Updated December 16, 2024 at 5:29 PM ET: Additional comment from Professor Mazier.

Start your day with the best cryptocurrency insights from David Kanellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire Newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between cryptocurrencies, macroeconomics, politics, and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner, and Felix Goffin. Subscribe to the Forward Way Newsletter.

Get alpha straight to your inbox with 0xResearch Newsletter - Market highlights, charts, trade ideas, management updates, and more.

The Lightspeed Newsletter has everything Solana, in your inbox every day. Subscribe to Solana Daily News By Jack Kopenick and Jeff Albus.