Delysium, BlockTalk & The Future of AI Agents
Delysium, BlockTalk & The Future of AI Agents
This week we discuss portfolio company Delysium, the future of AI agent collaboration and the growing intersection of blockchain & AI – all of which we’ll be covering in detail at our upcoming all-day virtual event, BlockTalk 2025, happening in 2 weeks!
The Merging of AI & Web3
The world of Web3 has never stood still. Every year, new technologies emerge, narratives shift, and only the most adaptable projects find a way to stay ahead. Artificial Intelligence has quickly become a dominant force shaping the next phase of decentralized applications, and the most successful teams are the ones that saw this coming.
As a result, there is now a small, but thriving, group of forward-thinking companies operating in the lucrative intersection of blockchain and AI. One of the most compelling examples of this in our portfolio is Delysium – a company that began as an AI-powered gaming platform but quickly recognized there was a much bigger opportunity at play.
Meet Delysium, LucyOS & the YKILY Network
Delysium was originally conceived as an open-world blockchain-based game where players could shape the game’s universe with AI-driven assets. But, recognizing the tailwinds, the team leaned into their AI expertise to craft something far more ambitious: an AI agent network designed to reshape how digital economies function.
In December, they officially took the YKILY (You Know I Love You) network live – a blockchain-powered AI collaboration and payments network for AI agents with a chat-based AI operating system, called LucyOS – built in collaboration with Microsoft and Google. Today, they are hard at work expanding the network and are seeing impressive traction as the world prepares to move into what some are calling the agentic era of AI.
LucyOS – The AI Operating System
Going a bit deeper… LucyOS empowers users to execute complex crypto workflows through natural language commands already, effectively bridging the gap between Web2 familiarity and Web3 innovation. Her modular design and infinite canvas style interface offer an intuitive experience, enabling users to customize and share workflows effortlessly. As the central hub of the YKILY Network, Lucy not only facilitates access to specialized AI agents but also orchestrates their interactions to deliver comprehensive solutions tailored to individual user needs.
YKILY – The Stripe for AI Agents
But to understand the potential of such an ambitious idea, we must first understand why AI agents are such a powerful concept.
AI agents are like digital assistants on steroids—they can handle tasks, make decisions, and even collaborate with other AI agents without constant human input. Imagine a future where your AI financial advisor talks to your AI shopping assistant to optimize your budget, or where businesses automate entire workflows with intelligent systems working together seamlessly. This saves time, money, and headaches – and allows you to spend more time on the things you truly care about.
But for this to work, AI agents need a trusted way to communicate and collaborate across different platforms—and that’s exactly what YKILY enables. By creating a decentralized network where AI agents can share information, negotiate, and coordinate tasks, YKILY unlocks a world where AI works for you—smarter, faster, and more efficiently than ever before. In this way, YKILY is like Stripe for AI agents, providing a universal API for AI agents to connect, transact, and collaborate seamlessly across platforms.
Altogether this makes blockchain & decentralized applications much more accessible to the everyday user, who doesn’t want to mess around with raw-code interfaces or maybe has little technical background – but still firmly believes the future is digital and wants to use AI agents to simplify their daily lives.
From Gaming to Global AI Leader
Delysium’s pivot from gaming further into AI was not accidental though, by any means—it was a strategic move capitalizing on emerging tailwinds. Having been part of Nvidia’s Inception Program years ago and among the first teams to work with OpenAI to build GPT-3 models, Delysium was uniquely positioned to become a frontrunner in blockchain-based AI development. Their token, which launched in 2023, hit a peak FDV market cap of nearly $2bn last year as the world turned its attention to AI en masse.
In August, the team announced a headline strategic partnership with Sam Altman’s Worldcoin – arguably the world’s leading digital identity project, with an FDV market cap of nearly $20bn – further cementing their position at the intersection of AI and blockchain. By then, LucyOS—first released in beta in late 2023 and launched publicly in April 2024—had already surpassed 1.4 million connected wallets and facilitated nearly 3 million transactions. And by December 2024, the YKILY network was publicly launched – in effect, making all of its autonomous agents available for public use, with Lucy serving as the core operating system.
The Future of AI Agents & Web3
The YKILY network only just launched, but the impressive traction of LucyOS and the YKILY network suggest the team is onto something big. And it’s not hard to see why.
The integration of AI agents into decentralized applications is about to redefine how users interact with blockchain technology. From automated DeFi trading to NFT portfolio management and AI-powered governance, these intelligent agents will introduce a new level of efficiency and scalability to Web3 ecosystems. The chart above is a bit dated now, but you can see that this process has been underway since 2021.
Regular readers may recall that, more than a year ago, we wrote a blog titled “Jumping the Chasm: How AI Solves Blockchain’s Black Box Problem” – which predicted that AI would serve this exact function for blockchain in the near term, acting as the uniting interface tool which abstracts away blockchain’s backend complexity and paves the way for mass adoption.
The transition to practical, everyday AI agents is only just beginning though, and the intersection of blockchain and AI is still growing. But Delysium is already positioned as one of its key architects.
The Future is Seamless, Digital and Automated
Imagine skipping the hassle of manually selling Bitcoin and buying XYZ token—no more logging into a decentralized exchange, worrying about slippage, fees, or whether you're getting the best price. Instead, you simply tell your Web3 AI agent in the YKILY network what you want, and it handles everything. It finds the best venue, minimizes fees by breaking up trades strategically, and executes the transaction seamlessly – all while you take a nap, make lunch, or walk the dog.
Now take that a step further—need a blockchain-based loan? Instead of navigating a complex DeFi app, which can be admittedly daunting, your AI agent does it for you. It goes off and finds the best lending terms for you. Maybe it interacts with other agents if needed, and maybe it even secures a peer-to-peer loan directly with other agents outside of traditional protocols.
That’s the future Delysium is bringing to life – where AI agents handle the complexity of web3 for you. And with a live NLP-based web3 operating system and a recently launched public network for AI agent collaboration, they’re already well on their way.
So Why did we Invest?
Besides their obvious technical expertise and stellar track record in gaming – we invested in Delysium because they weren’t just following the AI boom, they were defining it.
Long before the world had heard of ChatGPT and AI became a dominant narrative in Web3, the Delysium team had been refining their models and building practical AI applications. Then, when the market conditions aligned, they moved aggressively to position themselves as a top player in the space. This level of foresight and strategic adaptability is exactly what we look for in our investments.
Moreover, Delysium’s partnerships with Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia validated what we already knew: the team had the ability to execute at the highest levels. Their token launch, their rapid adoption, and their continued innovation with LucyOS and YKILY all demonstrated their long-term potential.
So for us, investing in Delysium wasn’t just about backing a promising project—it was about securing a stake in the future of AI-driven Web3 infrastructure, which is going to redefine the way we conduct finance and commerce globally.
Join Us at BlockTalk 2025
If you’re fascinated by the intersection of AI, blockchain, and decentralized collaboration, you can’t afford to miss BlockTalk 2025. Some of the brightest minds in AI and Web3 will share insights into the future of AI agents and decentralized applications.
Secure your spot now and be part of the conversation that’s shaping the next wave of technological evolution. Sign up today for BlockTalk 2025—you don’t want to miss this!
Author
Christopher Nelson
Head of Digital Asset Research