Wayfinder recently won first place in the Kaito Pre-TGE arena voting, simultaneously opening registration and launching a task incentive program, allowing participants to share in a 2% token airdrop. Why is this AI project so popular? Read on! For more project analysis, please refer to the “DoinBlock Alpha Mining Series”.
(Background: Alpha Mining: Text conversations can complete transactions! HeyAnon launches DeFi plugin AskAnon)
(Additional Background: Alpha Mining: What is the DeFAI project Bankr behind Musk’s Grok token? Which AI tokens surged simultaneously?)
The DeFAI project Wayfinder recently won first place in the Kaito Pre-TGE arena voting and opened registration, launching a task incentive program that allows participants to share an additional 2% token airdrop. As a highly anticipated AI project, what makes Wayfinder so compelling? This article delves into an in-depth analysis.
What is Wayfinder?
Wayfinder is an AI protocol developed by the well-known team behind the card game “Parallel”, Parallel Studios, aimed at introducing artificial intelligence agents (AI Agents) into the blockchain. Compared to Agent projects like the upcoming Virtuals Protocol, which is set to rise by the end of 2024, it explores the potential of this field much earlier. The project initially supported Colony, an AI survival simulation game launched by Parallel Studios, and has now expanded into a general blockchain interaction tool, not limited to the gaming sector.
The AI agents of Wayfinder are referred to as “Shells,” capable of executing tasks such as navigation (finding the best trading paths), trading, and interacting with dApps, significantly reducing the complexity of blockchain operation for users and enabling all users to easily participate in the crypto ecosystem. With its ability to assist users in completing DeFi operations, Wayfinder is seen as a strong competitor in the DeFAI (DeFi + AI) space.
Technical Architecture
Wayfinder’s architecture is designed as a chain-agnostic tool, providing the infrastructure for AI agents (Shells) to operate across major blockchain ecosystems. Its core technical architecture can be summarized into three main components:
- Wayfinding Graph
Composed of nodes (smart contracts, protocols, assets, etc.) and paths, similar to a “map” of the blockchain ecosystem. The Wayfinding Graph is a dynamically built knowledge base co-created by the community, where anyone can submit new Wayfinding Paths.
These paths guide Shells on how to perform cross-chain transactions and execute smart contracts, which must go through verification agents and manual review to ensure accuracy and safety.
The community operating the verification agents can earn Wayfinder tokens ($PROMPT) as rewards and recoup penalties from erroneous paths. Developers of validated Wayfinding Paths can also earn $PROMPT as rewards and receive additional returns from the fees paid when Shells use those paths.
Private Wayfinding Paths: Developers can create private Wayfinding Paths that are restricted to specific users and may set additional fees or permission mechanisms.
AI agents Shells use the Wayfinding Graph to find the best trading paths across different blockchains, ensuring the accuracy and security of transaction execution. - AI Agent Shell
Shells are autonomous AI agents within the Wayfinder ecosystem that assist users in executing transactions, managing assets, and sharing experiences with other Shells. They ensure transaction security through secure private key management mechanisms and can be applied across multiple domains, including DeFi, NFT trading, asset management, gaming, and security monitoring. Shells rely on the Wayfinder token ($PROMPT) for operation and provide various economic incentives for both users and developers to participate in the ecosystem’s development. - Key Functions of Shells:
- Autonomous navigation of blockchain ecosystems: capable of parsing the Wayfinder’s navigation graph to find the best trading paths.
- Executing smart contract interactions: able to automatically interact with smart contracts for token trading, NFT trading, liquidity provision, etc.
- Independent Web3 wallet: each Shell possesses an independent Web3 wallet for secure private key management and transaction signing. In operation, Shells can only execute transactions authorized by users and cannot independently decide on fund flows; they must obtain user confirmation before executing crucial transactions.
- AI memory and learning: Shells have a memory mechanism that allows them to learn from past transaction experiences to optimize future decisions.
- Modular extension: Developers can train Shells to adapt to specific application scenarios, such as DeFi trading, NFT investment, etc.
- Multi-signature mechanism: allows Shells to automatically sign transactions under specific conditions while maintaining security.
- Collaboration between different Shells: enables multiple Shells to cooperate in executing more complex strategies, such as cross-chain arbitrage trading.
- Open-source Ecosystem
Wayfinder modifies and optimizes open-source LLMs (Large Language Models) to understand the blockchain ecosystem and interact with Web3 applications. To ensure the transparency and scalability of AI agents, Wayfinder will open-source datasets and LLMs, allowing community developers to continuously improve and optimize AI agent behavior.
Through an open-source model, Wayfinder encourages developer participation, promotes community co-construction, and further expands the application scope and functionality of AI agents.
In future upgrades, Wayfinder plans to introduce a decentralized private key management mechanism, allowing Shells to perform more complex automated trading within the scope of user authorization, such as:
Token Economics
The token economics of Wayfinder revolves around two tokens, $PROMPT and $PRIME. $PROMPT is Wayfinder’s native token, while $PRIME comes from the blockchain gaming ecosystem Echelon Prime. The development team of Wayfinder, Parallel Studios, belongs to this ecosystem, linking the two. By staking $PRIME, users can participate in future $PROMPT airdrops.
The total supply of $PROMPT is 1 billion tokens, with an initial distribution plan as follows:
- Community – 50%
- Staking $PRIME – 40%
- Future incentive rewards – 5%
- Wayfinding rewards – 5%
- Foundation treasury – 6.66%
- Launch partner treasury – 1.34%
- Team – 16.51%
- Investors – 25.49%
$PROMPT serves as a utility currency within the Wayfinder ecosystem, with primary uses including:
- Creating Shells: Users must pay PROMPT to launch a Shell.
- Navigation fees: Shells will pay PROMPT as Gas fees when interacting with the network and other Shells, with a portion allocated to path developers and the protocol itself.
- Storage and memory management: Shells’ memory requires PROMPT to store, modify, or delete.
- Exclusive trading paths: PROMPT can be used to purchase advanced trading paths, enhancing the success rate and efficiency of Shell transactions.
Funding Reached $85 Million
Although Wayfinder has not publicly disclosed specific funding information, its development team, Parallel Studios, has previously secured significant financial support, providing a solid foundation for Wayfinder’s development.
Parallel Studios completed a $50 million funding round led by Paradigm in October 2021, achieving a valuation of $500 million. In March 2024, the team secured another $35 million in funding, with participation from notable institutions such as Solana Ventures, Distributed Global, and VanEck.
How to Participate
Currently, there are mainly two ways to qualify for future $PROMPT token airdrops:
- Share 40% of $PROMPT: Stake $PRIME, with a minimum of 2 tokens, currently costing about $9.
- Share 2% of $PROMPT: Free registration and deposit the equivalent of $10 in Gas tokens or stablecoins across 6 chains:
- Mandatory deposits: Base (ETH or USDC/USDT worth $10) and Solana (SOL or USDC/USDT worth $10).
- Optional: BNB, Arbitrum, Polygon, Ethereum, with $10 each to gain more shares.
Conclusion
Wayfinder is built by the experienced Parallel team, whose AI Agents feature memory capabilities and can share experiences with other Agents. The market is generally focused on its cross-chain trading capabilities and gamification application prospects. Currently, it is a key time to participate in early activities and accumulate future token allocations. Through free registration, task completion, and staking, users can deeply engage in this high-potential project.
In the future, Wayfinder plans to introduce various types of Agents and establish a marketplace for users to explore pre-reviewed Wayfinder Paths, which is worth looking forward to.
However, the true potential of DeFAI projects still depends on whether AI agents can bring real value, attract more funds for custody, and effectively lower the barriers for user participation in DeFi. Similar to the Hey Anon project, the market has become accustomed to the basic functionalities of AI agents executing swaps, lending, and cross-chain bridging. To break through the bottleneck, DeFAI must further achieve:
- Arbitrage trading: AI automatically discovers price differences between different chains and protocols.
- Strategy trading execution: Automatically placing orders and adjusting trading parameters based on market conditions.
- Smart Yield Farming: Assessing impermanent loss and providing optimal farming strategies for idle assets.
- Portfolio rebalancing: AI monitors market fluctuations and dynamically adjusts asset allocations based on risk thresholds.
These advanced functionalities will determine whether DeFAI can transform from a “concept” into a “necessity,” effectively opening up incremental markets. Now, with the rise of MCP (Model Context Protocol), which standardizes the communication methods between AI agents and external tools, as long as AI agents adhere to the MCP protocol, they can utilize all MCP tools, and vice versa. This significantly enhances the feasibility and application breadth of DeFAI, warranting continuous attention from all DeFi participants.
