“`html

Echos, the artificial intelligence platform for agentic tokens, is shutting down. On March 27, the AI agent platform, developed by the Cosmos-based liquid staking platform Stride, announced that operations will cease on May 1, 2025.

Launched in beta in November 2024, Echos cited low adoption as the primary reason for its closure. According to a notice posted on X, the experiment failed to gain meaningful traction, reflecting a broader slowdown in the crypto AI agent space.

β€œEchos was always an experiment. Unfortunately, Echos has seen little adoption. Also, the overall AI agents market has contracted significantly,” the team stated.

What Was Echos?

Echos was a Stride app built on Celestia, designed as a rollup. Upon launch, the Stride team envisioned Echos’ focus on AI and memecoins as a potential disruptor to the future of decentralized finance (DeFi). Their plan was to evolve Echos from an experimental product into a full rollup ecosystem supporting various use cases within Stride’s liquid staking network.

However, a lack of user traction has brought these ambitious plans to an end. The team has urged all users to withdraw their funds before the platform shuts down permanently on May 1, 2025.

Inspiration Behind Echos

According to Stride, Echos drew inspiration from Terminal of Truths, an AI agent that gained significant attention in 2024 after its association with the memecoin Goateus Maximus. Terminal of Truths, a large language model platform backed by Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, became notorious for promoting the GOAT token on X. This action propelled the memecoin to a $1 billion market cap.

Stride aimed to replicate this success by creating an AI-driven platform where users could launch their own Echo using just a crypto wallet and an X account. Despite this vision, the platform struggled to gain traction and failed to move beyond its initial development phase.

The Broader AI Agent Sector

While Echos is shutting down, the AI agent sector continues to see new developments and projects. Notable initiatives in this space include Virtuals Protocol, ai16z, Freysa AI, and Delysium. These platforms aim to push forward innovation in AI-powered crypto technologies, even as the market faces challenges.

The closure of Echos highlights the difficulties many experimental platforms encounter in achieving widespread adoption. As the cryptocurrency and AI sectors evolve, developers and investors are likely to focus on projects with proven demand and scalability.

“`