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Howdy!

Happy Monday. I’m marking myself “safe” from reply guy-ing tweets about Ethereum from over the weekend.

Today, we’ve got Eliza Labs’ Stanford partnership, AI agent mindshare and PNUT controversy:

Stanford lab partners with team behind ‘ai16z’ AI agent project

Eliza Labs, the team behind the ai16z AI agent platform, struck a research partnership deal with Stanford University’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative, Eliza Labs announced this morning.  

For the past two months, so-called AI agents that generally attach chat bots to memecoins have raced to hundreds of millions in market capitalization, including ai16z. By funding a lab at Stanford, ai16z is trying to do what all successful memecoin-linked projects have to do — keep the joke going.

“This is the funniest possible thing,” Shaw, Eliza Labs’ anonymous founder, told me on a call after I said I found the memecoin project and research university pairing amusing. “If I could think of the most entertaining thing that we could do, it would definitely be to start a lab at Stanford.”

Eliza Labs is the entity behind ai16z, which is a DAO whose assets are set to be traded by an autonomous AI bot, jokingly named Marc AIndreessen after the real a16z co-founder. The AI version of Marc Andreessen is built using the Eliza framework, which lets agents interact on social media, surf the web and trade tokens. This AI agent technology is buzzy at the moment: ai16z’s GitHub repository has already been forked some 1,400 times.

Once the platform is public, AI Marc will create a so-called marketplace of trust where he ranks DAO members based on how good their advice is. 

Stanford’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative brings a number of Stanford professors together to produce crypto-adjacent research and “promote the success of public and private digital currencies and their many use cases.” The research lab is funded by crypto industry members like Eliza Labs, who must pay either $250,000 for a Tier 1 membership or $75,000 for a Tier 2 membership. 

Snickerdoodle CEO Jonathan Padilla, a FDCI adviser who co-founded the lab, said Eliza Labs gave Stanford a “larger grant” that exceeded $250,000, though he declined to give an exact number. With its associated ai16z token trading at a market capitalization of over $800 million, Eliza Labs was evidently able to foot the bill. 

Stanford researchers will develop trust mechanisms for AI agents, which are known to hallucinate at times, and investigate how agents can coordinate with and govern each other. 

Stanford Professors David Mazières and Dan Boneh will lead the lab alongside a cohort of graduate student researchers, Padilla added.

Eliza Labs’ Stanford partnership didn’t come cheap, but with the AI agent space currently locked in an arms race for attention, Shaw and the rest of the DAO’s leadership evidently found the partnership worthwhile. The founder also hopes the partnership will produce some good science.

“We’re looking for Ph.D’s to blow our minds and expand the realm of what’s possible with the technology that we’re unlocking,” Shaw said.

— Jack Kubinec

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We’ve been deeply involved in the community since 2021, supporting some of the best known projects in the ecosystem. We help teams with their go-to-market, brand positioning, social and PR, and fundraising strategy, and we also work across other ecosystems including Monad, Base and TON.

If you're a team looking to expedite your marketing success, let’s talk: [email protected] or @rockin_renaud on telegram.

Hot air rises:

Fartcoin led the way in AI agent “mindshare” over the past 24 hours, as measured by CookieDAO. Fartcoin got its start after being endorsed by truth_terminal, the unhinged AI bot on X that spawned the viral GOAT memecoin (and much of the current AI agent craze).

GOAT itself is third in mindshare, followed closely by the subject of today’s main item, ai16z. The latter undoubtedly aims to boost its mindshare through its partnership with Stanford University.

— Jack Kubinec

Brought to you by:

Renaud Partners is the premier go-to-market consulting firm for early-stage Solana teams.

We’ve been deeply involved in the community since 2021, supporting some of the best known projects in the ecosystem. We help teams with their go-to-market, brand positioning, social and PR, and fundraising strategy, and we also work across other ecosystems including Monad, Base and TON.

If you're a team looking to expedite your marketing success, let’s talk: [email protected] or @rockin_renaud on telegram.

Peanut the Squirrel owner Mark Longo has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Binance, accusing the exchange of infringing on his trademarked mascot by promoting the PNUT memecoin. The token, whose market cap pushed to $2.25 billion in November, gained viral traction after news of Peanut’s tragic death sparked a wave of memes in late 2024.

Longo claims Binance’s involvement in promoting the token has caused confusion, tying his beloved pet to what he sees as an unauthorized crypto cash grab. His legal team is demanding the exchange halt all infringing activities by Dec. 31 or prepare for court, warning of penalties up to $150,000 per infringement.

Many Solana degens seem to believe (erroneously) that memes operate outside the bounds of traditional intellectual property. @crypto_kevo__ dismissed the issue entirely, arguing, “Worst case scenario, he’s claiming the picture is his, so they could just change it.” @GabiandAldo questioned Longo’s confidence in the case: “He thinks Binance and Coinbase didn’t check those things before listing? This guy is crazy thinking he will make something from it.” @Lake_Investor brushed Longo’s allegations off as “another stupid lawsuit and ambulance-chasing lawyers to fill up the docket.”

But not everyone sees it that way. @beaniemaxi argued, “You shouldn’t be able to just hijack random images and launch these as a memecoin. Yes, call me a mid-curver or whatever, but IP rights matter. The entire capitalist system is built on respecting property ownership. Provenance wins.”

The backlash didn’t stop at the legal merits however, as Longo’s character also came under fire. @CryptoShrimp_X called him a “loser” while @gamblers99 claimed he was “100% scammer,” and accused him of “dropping a fifth scam token this week.” Similarly, @FranklinsCrypto alleged that Longo had “rug pulled many coins himself and even stole money from the people that gave him money that was related to the squirrel in the beginning.”

Some voices called for a return to compassion. “Where did the empathy for the owner and the animal go?” asked @messyroshko. “C’mon people, wake up your souls. Show some respect and kindness!” However, empathy appears to be in short supply, with many framing Longo’s actions as nothing more than a cash grab. “If he really loved PNut, he would be happy millions of people love him too,” @Memecoinoisseur argued. “Instead, he became a greedy bastard.”

“The lawsuit against Binance over Peanut’s IP rights looks like a long shot,” wrote @theodormeme, who noted that “memes and internet culture make traditional IP claims murky” and that PNUT “might be perceived as community sentiment rather than Longo’s IP.” @DavidMitchel91 summed up the absurdity of the entire ordeal, asking “Who knew a squirrel could stir up such drama?”

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Jonathan Padilla, CEO and co-founder of Snickerdoodle: