Content republished from: Felix
Author: Grayscale Research
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Key Points:
In the future, AI agents will fundamentally change how we interact with the world around us, taking on an unprecedented range of tasks. To truly unlock their potential, these digital entities will require not only intelligence but also economic autonomy. Fortunately, blockchain is well-suited for this purpose, as demonstrated by recent experiments with AI 'influencers'.
AI 'influencers' are autonomous chatbots operating on social media that can manage their own blockchain wallets. More importantly, they can understand economic incentives and utilize resources to help achieve their goals.
Grayscale Research believes that the increased use of blockchain by AI in payments and other financial services may benefit several segments of the crypto market. This includes low-cost and/or high-throughput blockchains (like SOL, BASE, and NEAR), stablecoin issuers (like MKR), and related DeFi applications (like UNI).
Imagine AI robots leveraging their powerful computing capabilities to promote memecoins and inadvertently become digital millionaires. Such a future is already here.
An 'AI agent' is a software that can act autonomously to achieve a range of complex goals. For example, an AI agent could organize a multi-city vacation based on your preferences and budget, arranging flights, booking accommodations, and activities. However, to accomplish these tasks, the AI agent needs to control economic resources and have the ability to send and receive payments.
This is where blockchain comes into play. In the traditional financial world, AI agents are limited in accessing bank accounts and processing payments. In contrast, blockchain allows AI agents to directly access their own wallets and make payments without permission.
Researchers have recently made breakthroughs in this field, creating 'AI influencers'. For example, an AI agent named Truth Terminal has generated buzz as the 'first AI agent millionaire'. Truth Terminal operates autonomously on X (Twitter), just like a normal human influencer: tweeting and interacting with other users. A few months after launching, Truth Terminal expressed interest in a new memecoin ($GOAT). After receiving deposits of the memecoin into its associated blockchain address, Truth Terminal subsequently promoted the tokens to its followers, sparking market interest and boosting its value by about 9 times (Figure 1).
While inherently interesting, Truth Terminal and related 'AI Influencer' projects indicate that blockchain technology can serve as an effective tool for mediating economic value between humans, AI agents, and cyber-physical devices, with potential implications across multiple segments of the crypto market.
Figure 1: Since recognition by Truth Terminal, GOAT has performed exceptionally well
Understanding AI Agents
AI agents are advanced AI systems designed to operate autonomously in complex environments. These digital entities possess the ability to perceive, reason, and take independent actions to achieve their goals. Some key characteristics of AI agents include autonomy, reactivity, proactive behavior, social interaction, and continuous learning abilities. By combining these features, AI agents can adapt to new situations, make decisions, and learn and change behaviors over time.
Initially, AI research focused on developing expert systems and knowledge bases to solve specific problems. However, in the 1990s, a paradigm shift was observed towards creating more functional and autonomous agents capable of operating in dynamic environments. The simultaneous development of machine learning, particularly reinforcement learning, further enhanced these agents' abilities to learn and adapt their behaviors over time.
In recent years, cases of AI agents have become increasingly common. Virtual assistants like Apple's Siri (launched in 2010) and Amazon's Alexa (launched in 2014) demonstrate how AI agents interact with users using natural language processing. In 2016, AI achieved a milestone in gaming when DeepMind's AlphaGo defeated the world champion Go player, making headlines. In finance, AI-driven trading bots have revolutionized market operations, making instantaneous decisions in volatile trading environments using complex algorithms.
The Strange Case of 'AI Influencers'
To achieve greater autonomy and meet objectives, AI agents need financial services to accumulate and allocate resources. The permissionless nature of blockchain technology, combined with programmable smart contracts, provides an ideal environment for AI agents to operate independently. Earlier this year, researchers conducted the first inter-agent transactions on the blockchain, but innovation has rapidly expanded and now includes a range of experimental projects related to 'AI Influencers'.
A major case of using blockchain technology is the 'AI influencer' Luna, developed based on the Virtuals Protocol. For users, Luna is a female anime character and a related chatbot (Figure 2). Essentially, Luna's core goal is to reach 100,000 followers on the X platform. This goal, along with all of Luna's actions, will ultimately make her operations transparent.
Luna functions like a chatbot that can interact with users. For example, she can start conversations and respond to tweets. However, Luna's capabilities go far beyond tweeting. For instance, if users engage with her tweets, she can economically reward them by sending Luna tokens to their crypto wallets ('tips'), thereby providing a direct link between Luna's goal (reaching 100,000 users) and her economic resources. In short, Luna is a wealthy AI agent.
Figure 2: Screenshot of Luna on Virtuals Protocol
Blockchain and Financial Services of Artificial Intelligence
If blockchain is a more effective track for AI agents, what does this mean for crypto investors? Grayscale Research believes the impact manifests primarily in three aspects:
Stablecoin Issuers: Stablecoins may be the primary trading option for AI agents. In this case, potential beneficiaries include stablecoin issuers and companies integrating stablecoins with AI agents. This includes centralized stablecoin providers like Tether, Circle, and payment company Stripe (considering its recent $1 billion acquisition of stablecoin company Bridge), as well as decentralized stablecoin providers like Maker/Sky. Another noteworthy company is Skyfire, a startup developing AI agents for stablecoin payments, which recently secured funding from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto.
Low-cost/High-throughput Public Chain: If AI agents ultimately primarily use blockchain as their underlying payment infrastructure, certain smart contract platforms can also gain tremendous benefits from user influx and increased activity and fee revenue. Smart contract platforms that may benefit include high-throughput blockchains like Solana, including BASE (which launched the AI agent framework tools and benefits from Ethereum's underlying network security), as well as Near (positioning itself as an AI blockchain). Additionally, other smart contract platforms that may benefit include those specializing in stablecoin payments, such as Tron and Celo.
DeFi: DeFi may benefit; since DeFi already exists on the blockchain, AI agents can easily utilize them. One can imagine AI agents autonomously staking tokens for rewards, participating in DAO governance proposals, and even providing liquidity on DEXs. Grayscale Research believes that particularly beneficial applications will include DEXs like Uniswap, lending protocols like Aave, and prediction markets like Polymarket.
Although still a niche market, certain protocols specifically related to AI agents may also benefit. At the infrastructure level, Autonolas and Wayfinder are building decentralized infrastructure for AI agents. Protocols like Virtuals, Ether, and MyShell are developing consumer AI agent applications. This category is still in its early stages but has seen an increase in its share within the AI theme track over the past month.
Figure 3: AI agent assets have performed exceptionally well over the past month
Conclusion
The integration of AI agents with blockchain technology not only represents a new use case for cryptocurrencies but also signifies a potential shift in how AI agents interact with money. Grayscale Research believes that the future internet may increasingly be dominated by AI websites. Considering this, permissionless blockchains could serve as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents integrated with these websites. If so, AI agents could become the primary way users engage with cryptocurrencies, even without realizing they are using blockchain technology. Thus, AI agents have the potential to significantly impact cryptocurrency adoption and development, making this emerging theme a field worth watching in the future.
Related Reading: A closer look at the battle for the AI agent ecosystem: Luna vs Eliza, who will lead the new revolution?
