Solana AI Agent Hackathon Tokens Soar to $500 Million Market Cap

Tokens launched by projects participating in the Solana AI Agents hackathon have soared past a combined $500 million market cap, according to a Jan. 5 X post by Yash Agarwal, the curator of the just-concluded competition.

Demand for AI Agent tokens is driving the rally, following the successes of category leaders like AI16Z and Virtuals Protocol.

According to data from Pine Analytics, a blockchain analytics platform, the market cap of Solana AI Agent hackathon projects hit an all-time high of $516 million on Jan. 4. Sixty-four projects have launched tokens with an average market cap of $7.8 million. Thirteen projects have a market cap above $10 million, and 42 projects have a market cap over $1 million.

The top five hackathon tokens by market cap are SEND ($89.7 million), FXN ($66.6 million), BONGO ($34.7 million), ASSAI ($36.7 million), and NEUR ($35.1 million).

SEND is the native token of the SEND ecosystem, which powered the hackathon; FXN powers the FXN ecosystem, a decentralized protocol for AI agents; BONGO is the native token of Bongo Cat, an AI Agent chatbox; ASSAI is the native token of a crypto trading and analytics AI agent; and NEUR is the native token of the NEUR LLM, a Solana-native blockchain LLM.

"Short-sighted Hypertokenization"

Following the rise in demand for AI Agent tokens, many crypto experts have criticized the ongoing meta.

“Hypertokenisation of this meta is making builders short-sighted and blind. Currently, 90% of Crypto x AI projects are like cat/dog memecoins and it’s completely fine as long as they’re clear about it. Projects pitching their coins as ‘utility coins’ are bigger larps,” said Agarwal.

Dragonfly managing director Haseeb Qureshi also commented on the ongoing AI Agent meta in a Jan. 1 X post.

“These things are not really agents. These are chatbots with memecoins attached; they are barely agentic at all besides posting on Twitter. Current "AI agents" are also mostly "Wizard of Oz" agents—there are humans behind the scenes ensuring the AI doesn't go off the rails,” Qureshi said.