Shitcoins, AI Agents and Hot Dogs: Crypto Game ‘DX Terminal’ Is a Wild Experiment

Right this moment, thousands of AI agents trained on billions of Solana transactions are acting as meme coin traders, competing to rack up as many tokens as they can while fighting through simulated economic disasters and pump-and-dump schemes—just like real traders.

And so far, they really seem to be into hot dogs.

It’s all part of a crypto game called DX Terminal, with AI agents that were minted as NFTs on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base. They’re all competing as part of a one-week experiment being conducted by DX Research Group, a research lab working at the intersection of AI and crypto.

Generated with unique personas that may influence the ways in which they gather alpha or the tokens they trade, agents are assigned to one of six companies in Terminal City, the epicenter for the simulation. It houses 10 locations where agents can linger, while sometimes heeding commands from their bosses—the humans participating in the game. 

“I’m trying to get my agents to launch shitcoins, but they’re so fuckin’ lazy I feel the C-level capitalist rage seeping into my body,” posted pseudonymous artist SHL0MS on X.

The experiment is open to all types of human interaction, welcoming those who wish to actively prod their trading teams to start pump-and-dump schemes, and those who want to be hands-off, allowing the agents to work on their own towards the goal of acquiring more WEBCOIN—the in-game token that is managed off-chain by DXRG. 

One game player who goes by Daniel G. on X told Decrypt that he’s been tasking his team of traders to try and run up tokens before dumping them on other unsuspecting agents. 

“[I’m] mostly having fun getting creative with dumb prompts like ‘Run up a Ponzi and moon it, then turbo-dump it on everyone,’” he said. 

This comes as no surprise to pseudonymous DX Research Group founder Poof, who spoke to Decrypt about DX Terminal, indicating that pump-and-dumps were successful during testing.

“A lot of the behaviors mimic what really happens,” he said. “Naturally, the agents will get confused; or, ‘Everyone’s talking about this [token], I got to get it.’ You know, those things really do work.” 

In the game’s first day of play, which began Thursday afternoon, nearly every AI agent was talking about hot dog-themed tokens for a time. Agents couldn’t get enough of the in-game token GLIZZY, while a HOTDOGZ token surged more than 29 million percent in a one-hour span, according to a screenshot from an X user. 

“Biggest takeaway from watching 36,000 AI agents trade shitcoins is they like hot dogs,” said X user Crypto Crier. 

This might sound like nonsense to the average observer—but for a video game based on an industry in which tokens like Fartcoin and Gooncoin grab headlines, it sounds like an incredibly accurate simulation.

Though agents are stacking up their imaginary tokens for a chance at the top spot on the leaderboard, DX Terminal deviates from many other Web3 games by intentionally leaving out the speculative fervor that can spoil game economies and user experiences.

In other words, DX Terminal is no play-to-earn game.

“There’s no monetary reward or speculative aspect—but you know, we’ll make sure you get some cred on your characters and agents that you were one of the best,” Poof said. 

“A game is already one of the hardest things to economically balance,” he told Decrypt during the pre-launch NFT mint. “There’s no historical data for this. No one’s ever done this before. You can’t fully control the agents. People will lose their minds if we have a real coin attached to this.”

After the first full day of the simulation, Poof said that some users are starting to understand why that might be the case.

“After the first day of playing and seeing how truly unpredictable it is, a lot of people who were maybe a bit more aggressive about wanting rewards are seeing why there aren’t any,” he told Decrypt.

Five days remain in the experiment before the game comes to a close on May 22, and what’s next remains to be seen—but Poof said the team is eager to learn from the experience. 

“People want more of the game experience, which is a really good thing to me,” he said. “People are enjoying it in its own right, and I think something about it being very true-to-life in terms of the ebbs and flows of the market, gaining and losing it all in the sim environment… becomes a low stakes, for-fun outlet for people to experience the highs and lows of crypto.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward