Speculation is heating up as tokens like VVV and TIBBIR surge, while Vitalik Buterin calls out a new token launch.
Artificial intelligence (AI) tokens on Base are leading the market again, with established tokens like VVV and TIBBIR outperforming, while new launches are turning heads but also drawing criticism from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
TIBBIR and VVV are up 16% and 23%, respectively over the last 24 hours, and sentiment surrounding the AI sector continues to slowly make a comeback after flaming out in 2025.
As is tradition, new market leaders attract increased attention to new launches, and one making a lot of noise despite its relatively small valuation is CONWAY.
Developer Sigil Wen, a Fellow at Peter Thiel’s Thiel Fellowship, published an article on what he calls “Web 4.0,” in which AI is intended to earn and improve its own existence through automation and open web access.
Wen’s work has caught the attention of the broader AI development community beyond those who focus solely on crypto-adjacent work, and yesterday he announced that he will use fees accrued by the community-made CONWAY token to scale the “Conway Ecosystem”.
As a result, the CONWAY token soared to a market capitalization of $12 million before retracing sharply today.
Following the token’s brief explosion, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to X to criticize Wen’s vision, saying, “This is wrong.”
Buterin argued that putting more distance between humans and AIs is “not a good thing for the world” as “the point of Ethereum is to set *us* free, not to create something else that goes off and does some stuff freely while our own situation is unchanged or worsened.”
Wen, however, argues that the automation and issue Buterin is looking to avoid is inevitable, calling it “democratic input into AI.”
The back-and-forth has potentially shaken some $CONWAY holders’ confidence, and the token is down 55% over the last 24 hours, trading at a $3 million valuation. The market has seen a number of new “AI community-led tokens” in 2026, all of which have burned out quickly as developers distanced themselves from them.
The future of CONWAY remains to be seen, but while the trenches fight over the next big thing, established agentic AI tokens such as TIBBIR and VVV continue to lead the charge.