Paper Agents, Paper Gains: An Empirical Analysis of DeFi Investment Agents

arXiv:2605.29174v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: DeFi investment agents, systems that use AI for autonomous on-chain trading, have attained over USD 3 billion in combined token valuations since late 2024. We survey over 1,900 AI-tagged crypto projects, filter to investment-focused agents, and curate 10 representative projects spanning strategy and observability dimensions. We then conduct a deep-dive architectural analysis of two prominent agent frameworks, ElizaOS and Virtuals Protocol, and a q