🥛 The next big rotation 💰

GM. This is Milk Road Degen, the newsletter that sees AI agents the way your boomer uncle sees Alexa - "kinda creepy, but surprisingly useful".

Here’s what we got for you today:

✍️ The next big rotation
🍪 NFT market cap just ripped to $9.3B

Composer is an AI and automation platform for crypto trading. Stop guessing, start trading smarter and at lower fees with Composer.

Prices as of 8:00 AM ET.

THE NEXT BIG ROTATION (P1)

Don’t laugh, ok?

But yes, I think AI Agents are making a comeback - and in fact, many would argue they already have!

I know we’ve already had a wild AI mania in crypto; late 2024 was peak hysteria, and many got torched buying the top.

And like NFTs in 2021, 99% of the projects were useless - hype machines wrapped in vaporware.

Once that Trump token hit and sucked liquidity out of the market, nothing died harder and faster than AI x Crypto.

Source: DEXscreener

But here’s the thing about crypto pumps: The 1% that survive the purge end up being monsters.

And over the last 8 months, many projects have been quietly building: real products, real infrastructure, and in some cases, real AI that actually helps you make money.

So today we’ll dive into that narrative and look at some potential things to ape.

The market setup

The total market cap for Crypto AI currently sits at about ~$35 Billion - well below the $71B peak from late 2024 - despite products being miles ahead of where they were in December.

Source: CoinMarketCap

We’ve already ridden the hype wave and survived the crash; now we’re in the quiet phase where the real projects tend to make people rich.

And the most obvious use case has become quite clear, at least in the short term: DeFAI, as in DeFi x AI.

The setup is quite strong:

Better tech: Last cycle’s AI tools were clunky, unsafe, and kind of fake. Now we’ve got smart accounts, session keys, and onchain automation making them actually usable.
Base as the epicenter: Coinbase distribution via their DEX integration in the new Base App is the perfect funnel for AI-DeFi agents.
Yield pain point: Most people are lazy - AI agents that “just make me more yield” without custody risk will crush.

Buying any of these agents the last few months would have landed you in serious profit:

$MAMO: a Coinbase-adjacent vault optimizer that also rewards its own token.
$BNKR: AI-powered portfolio and trading automation. Also the first to deploy “tweet to launch a token” tech.
$ADM / $TIBBIR: no products yet, but with strong DeFi-AI hooks and from well-known VCs.

Source: @S4mmyEth

My under-the-radar DeFAI watchlist

I don’t own any of these right now - but I’m watching them hard.

These aren’t the usual tickers you see spammed on every watchlist. These are the ones quietly building real stuff.

Each one starts with a “quick facts” so you can skim them if you wish (but please read every sentence of the ones you like).

Cod3x - The black box brain

What it does: You create an agent, it trades for you while you sleep.

Quick facts:

Early market cap range, well below fully “discovered” valuation
Multiple strategy templates in the works for devs & non-devs
Potential to become the infra backbone if agent adoption spikes
Market Cap: $7.3M

Cod3x feels like the quiet builder that’s just waiting to hit the “go” button. It’s positioning itself as a universal execution layer for AI agents; the kind of base-layer infrastructure that could quietly run half the AI strategies in DeFi without anyone realizing it.

Instead of being a single product, Cod3x wants to be the app store of AI products, letting anyone spin up bots with pre-built modules for trading, yield, and onchain automation.

That being said, trading agents as-a-service is a very crowded field, so much so that I feel like all traders will just be bots soon (if not already). And this one requires a lot of work from the user, so there’s a tradeoff for its potential efficiency.

How to trade:

Buy on Milk Road Swap
Buy on Definitive (use my referral code!)
Contract Address: 0xC0D3700000c0e32716863323bFd936b54a1633d1

Bonus: watch this demo from Justin here

Source: @Cod3xOrg

WTF IS VIBE TRADING?

AI is transforming everything…

So why not let it take your crypto trading to the next level?

Composer is your AI and automation platform for crypto trading!

Put your ideas into play with unlimited backtests or browse top-performing crypto strategies built by the community. Need ideas? Just ask AI in plain English. Now that's vibe trading.

Here’s what makes it awesome:

Extremely low fees at just 0.3% per trade. No subscription fee needed.
Auto-capture price moves on majors like $BTC, $ETH, $SOL
Create, backtest, and automate your own strategy or copy top-performers

The best part? You can use code “2MILKBONUS” at sign-up to get a 2% bonus match.

Stop guessing. Start trading smarter with Composer.

THE NEXT BIG ROTATION (P2)

$ZyFAI - self-custody yield, on autopilot

What it does: Chases the highest yield for you, and rebalances on its own.

Quick facts:

Built for retail with a simple, clean UX
Various strategies: Safe, Yieldor, and soon Airdrop farming
Still early in price discovery phase - upside if adoption ticks up
Market Cap: $6.4M (FDV is $29.7M, and you know what that means…)

ZyFAI takes the trustless DeFi ethos and layers an AI brain on top of it. You deposit funds, it spins up a smart contract account in your name, and the AI gets permission to move your funds within set boundaries.

That means you keep custody - no “send to our wallet” nonsense - but still get the benefit of automated yield strategies.

They already have three running: Safe (Aave, Compound, Morpho), Yieldor (riskier vaults), and an upcoming Airdrop Strategy that could be a sleeper hit if it farms the right campaigns. At a sub $7M market cap, it feels like the market hasn’t noticed yet.

Like with Cod3x, this is a crowded field. But one that I think these guys could dominate, or at the very least become a major player.

How to trade:

Buy on Milk Road Swap
Buy on Definitive (use my referral code!)
Contract Address: 0xD080eD3c74a20250a2c9821885203034ACD2D5ae

$GIZA - The institutional favorite

What it does: Yield optimization that advertises 83% higher yields than static positions (insane).

Quick facts:

$1B+ agent-driven volume processed
$400M+ assets under management
Aiming to be the “institutional standard” for AI in DeFi
Similar to ZyFAI, but further along.
Market Cap: $44.5M (FDV is $317.5M)

Giza is the most “grown-up” of the bunch. It’s already handled over $1B in agent-driven transaction volume and has $400M+ in assets under management.

It’s built for institutions and serious whales, using session key tech so agents can act in real time without taking custody of your assets - a huge trust point.

They’ve been landing integrations across DeFi, positioning themselves as the secure AI layer for managing serious capital.

They have their own stablecoin and agent (ARMA), which I don’t fully understand. Honestly I’m a bit wary of all the stablecoin bull behavior right now, with everyone making their own. I’ll need to explore this more in the coming weeks.

How to trade:

Buy on Milk Road Swap
Buy on Definitive (use my referral code!)
Contract Address: 0x590830dFDf9A3F68aFCDdE2694773dEBDF267774

$ETHY - The tiny agent making big moves

What it does: Trading agent that burns its own token in every transaction.

Quick facts:

Team behind Basenames (650K+ users)
Recently #1 trending on Virtuals
Sitting right in the middle of the Virtuals ACP protocol
Recently featured in The Base App (huge!)
Market Cap: $5.0M

Source: @ethy_agent

$ETHY has been quietly stacking wins all month. Built by the team behind Basenames (650K+ users), it’s already listed on Coinbase and recently hit #1 trending on Virtuals.

The ChatGPT-style interface basically acts as the ultimate DeFi companion; it can stake tokens, setup DCAs, move stablecoins to high-yield positions, all that jazz! Plus the team promises it can sell autonomously based on risk signals. With an active, proven team and strong early traction, $ETHY’s setup feels like it has plenty more room to run.

That being said, it's a slightly more retail-friendly version of Cod3x, but comes with the risks of the agent not fully understanding signals. AIs are not always right. But this one has some serious momentum right now, up 10x this past week already.

How to trade:

Buy on Virtuals
Buy on Definitive (use my referral code!)
Contract Address: 0xC44141a684f6AA4E36cD9264ab55550B03C88643

Special Note: I noticed this morning that $ETHY took a big dump downwards. I’m not sure why, as it has the full support of the Virtuals team. But be mindful of this one and keep a close eye.

Bonus: who to follow

Listen, this AI stuff is way too smart for me. I spent hours reading about these projects, and still don’t fully understand them.

For this sector, I rely on the biggest brains in the business, and I recommend you give them a follow and read their stuff:

@S4mmy - Great newsletter + Daily Articles
@0xJeff - Great writing + Weekly paid newsletter picks
@VirtualMorales - Where I got the alpha for two of these picks

Wrapping up

This isn’t about betting on “AI” as a buzzword again.

It’s about betting on AI agents that help you make more money in DeFi.

The hype phase is over. The products work (sort of!). The charts have started moving, and Base has signaled it will support all serious builders on the platform.

So do you think AI will come back with a vengeance? Or will you let your funds sit in a comfy little 5% APR…

The choice is yours, degen.