In the entire AI narrative of crypto, many projects have appeared and quickly disappeared. However, from a perspective of survival until the next bull run cycle, three names are frequently mentioned: $NEAR, $TAO , and $VIRTUAL.

📈 $NEAR – Public Chain AI Infrastructure
NEAR Protocol is positioning itself as an AI-native blockchain. Its biggest strength is sharding technology, which allows the network to scale effectively and handle large volumes of data—something very necessary for future AI applications.
Additionally, the NEAR ecosystem is focusing on building tools for AI to interact directly with the blockchain, creating an infrastructure layer where AI agents can operate, trade, and collaborate with each other.
📉$TAO – Decentralized AI Network
Bittensor takes a completely different approach: building a decentralized machine learning network.
In this ecosystem, AI models can contribute computing power and data to earn rewards in the form of $TAO tokens. Bittensor also develops subnet systems, where groups can build specialized AI models.
The attractive point of TAO is that it aims to create an open marketplace for artificial intelligence, where AI is not controlled by a few large tech companies.
📊 $VIRTUAL – AI Agent Platform
Virtuals Protocol focuses on a new trend: the AI Agent economy.
The project provides a platform to create and operate AI agents that can interact with users, with Web3 applications, and even with other agents.
If in the future millions of AI agents operate on the internet, platforms like Virtuals could become the “App Store” for AI agents.