IRIS suddenly became popular, the new darling on the Virtual platform?

In the past few days, a suddenly emerging new project has overshadowed almost all the upcoming projects on the Virtual launch platform.

It is IRIS.

IRIS is an AI Agent focused on smart contract security.

This project has a strong background. Technically, it is supported by Nethermind, the core team of the Ethereum ecosystem; in terms of specific operations and strategies, it is managed by the Virtual team. Therefore, it can be considered a collaboration between the Ethereum ecosystem team and the Virtual team.

In addition to its unique background, the project's launch is also different from previous AI Agents. This project is the first to launch on the Ethereum mainnet within the Virtual ecosystem, so participants will need to claim tokens on the mainnet in the future rather than on Base.

In terms of token distribution, this project's operations are also different from the past, essentially treating it as a public welfare project. 37.5% of the tokens are used for fundraising, 12.5% for liquidity, and the remaining 50% is entirely allocated to the community. The team has not reserved any shares for itself.

Regarding the launch arrangement, the project team has made special designs, announcing that the project will launch tonight (Beijing time) as soon as the news is made public. This rapid launch schedule is intended to prevent participants from having extra time to accumulate points, allowing all participants to compete fairly from the same starting line.

At the same time as the announcement of the IRIS project, the promotional video was also released and shared by both the Ethereum official account and the Virtual project team.

This news quickly went viral on Twitter, with even some accounts that previously did not pay attention to this sector (such as those focusing solely on NFTs) starting to follow this project. Within the Virtual ecosystem, many accounts expressed their intention to go all-in with their points to participate in this project. This caused other projects that had previously attracted a lot of attention within the ecosystem to suddenly fade into the background.

Almost everyone's focus has shifted to IRIS.

This illustrates the project's popularity.

One of the most eye-catching highlights of this project is that its technical support comes from the core team of the Ethereum ecosystem.

In fact, members of the Ethereum core team have previously participated in other projects. For example, the recently known projects include the layer two scaling solutions Scroll and MegaETH. Although these projects are still progressing, for various reasons, they are not as popular as initially imagined at this moment.

From the experiences of these past projects, it can be seen that the core members of the Ethereum ecosystem mainly focus on the technology of the projects, such as the robust technology of Scroll and MegaETH. However, the success of a project is only one of the factors; it is not necessarily the determining factor.

Therefore, for IRIS, although the technology is solid, its future success will likely depend more on whether the Virtual team, responsible for strategy and operations, can manage it well.

In my opinion, the most noteworthy aspect of this project is its ecological and directional significance. As the first officially announced AI Agent on the Ethereum mainnet, it represents Ethereum's declaration in the AI + Crypto sector.

Through this declaration, on one hand, Ethereum hopes to attract more AI developers to enter the Ethereum (mainnet and various layer two expansions) ecosystem to showcase their talents; on the other hand, it affirms the current position of the Virtual platform in the AI + Crypto sector.

Returning to the project, there is no doubt that it will be oversubscribed; the only suspense is how much it will be oversubscribed.

For such a project, even if general retail investors go all-in, I estimate that the final shares they can obtain will be extremely limited. Because the shares are few, it may not be possible to make much money from it, so participating just for fun is advisable, and I do not recommend approaching it with a strong gambling mentality.

I am more curious about how the IRIS team will allocate the remaining 50% to the community.