What happened
Teng told CoinDesk that the agent narrative has matured past the first wave of demo bots and consumer chat overlays. In his framing, agents now hold wallets, transact, contract for services, and route value between counterparties without a human in the loop. That shift, he argues, turns agents from software features into participants in economic networks.
The interview, published Thursday on CoinDesk, did not commit to specific product timelines from Virtuals. It read more as a thesis statement on where Teng sees the category heading over the next twelve to eighteen months. Virtuals Protocol launched as a platform for tokenized AI agents and gained traction during the 2024-2025 AI-token rotation, with its native token VIRTUAL among the most-watched names in the cluster.
Why it matters
Virtuals sits near the center of the crypto-AI sector that formed in late 2024 around tokens tied to on-chain agents. Teng's framing matters because it stakes a specific position. The first generation of AI tokens leaned on the prompt-and-reply paradigm. The second, in his view, leans on agents that own assets, pay for compute, and split revenue with token holders.
That is a sharper claim than the catch-all 'AI plus crypto' story the sector has been priced on. It also raises the bar. If agents are now economic actors, the relevant metric is agent-generated cash flow, not engagement or hype cycles. Investors who bought the chat thesis need a reason to stay through the transition, and a founder reframing the category is the kind of input that forces that question into the open.