AI agents could become the primary means for a large number of users to enter the cryptocurrency space.
Written by: Michael Zhao, Will Ogden Moore
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
Overview
In the future, AI agents will fundamentally change how we interact with the world around us, taking on a variety of tasks on our behalf. To truly unlock their potential, these digital entities need not only intelligence but also economic autonomy. Fortunately, blockchain is well-suited for this purpose.
AI influencers (autonomous chatbots operating on social media) can operate their own blockchain wallets. More importantly, they can understand economic incentives and leverage resources to help achieve their goals.
Grayscale Research believes that AI's increasing use of blockchain-based financial services could drive the development of multiple cryptocurrency segments. This includes low-cost, high-throughput blockchains like Solana, Base, and NEAR, stablecoin issuers like Sky, and related decentralized finance (DeFi) applications such as Uniswap.
Have you ever imagined a future where an AI robot utilizes its powerful computing capabilities to promote memecoins and inadvertently become a digital millionaire? That future is already here.
'AI agents' are software that can make autonomous decisions to achieve a range of complex goals. For instance, you can instruct an AI agent to organize a multi-city vacation, arranging flights and booking hotels according to your preferences and budget. However, to accomplish these tasks, AI agents need to control economic resources and possess the ability to send and receive payments.
Blockchain was born for this purpose. In traditional finance, 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.
Recently, researchers have made some thought-provoking breakthroughs in this field, creating AI influencers. For example, an AI agent named 'Truth Terminal' made headlines as the 'first AI millionaire'. Truth Terminal operates autonomously on X (formerly Twitter), behaving like an ordinary human KOL: tweeting and interacting with other users. A few months after its launch, Truth Terminal expressed interest in a new memecoin (GOAT). After transferring funds to its associated wallet address, Truth Terminal subsequently promoted the token to its followers, generating interest that ultimately led to the token's price increasing by about 9 times.
Although this is an entertaining experiment, Truth Terminal and related AI influencer projects are proving that blockchain technology can be an effective tool for mediating economic value between humans, AI agents, and connected physical devices.
Figure 1: Price performance of GOAT since Truth Terminal promoted it
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 features of AI agents include autonomy, reactiveness, proactive behavior, social interaction, and continuous learning capability. By combining these features, AI agents can adapt to new situations, make decisions, and learn and change behavior over time.
Initially, AI research focused on developing expert systems and knowledge bases for specific problem-solving tasks. However, in the 1990s, the research paradigm shifted to creating multifunctional, autonomous agents that could operate in dynamic environments. At the same time, advancements in machine learning further enhanced these agents' ability to learn and adjust their behavior.
In recent years, examples of AI agents have become increasingly common in our daily lives. Virtual assistants like Apple's Siri (launched in 2010) and Amazon's Alexa (launched in 2014) exemplify how AI agents interact with users using natural language processing. In 2016, DeepMind's AlphaGo achieved a milestone in the field of game AI, making headlines for defeating the world champion in Go. In finance, AI trading bots have fundamentally transformed how markets operate, making instantaneous decisions in turbulent trading environments using complex algorithms.
Strange Case: AI Influencer
To gain greater autonomy and achieve their goals, AI agents need financial services to accumulate and distribute resources. The permissionless nature of blockchain technology, coupled with programmable smart contracts, provides an ideal environment for AI agents to operate independently. Earlier this year, researchers conducted the first transactions between agents on the blockchain, but innovation has rapidly expanded, and a series of experiments related to AI influencers are now emerging.
A typical example of an AI influencer using blockchain technology is Luna, developed based on the Virtuals Protocol. For users, Luna appears as a female anime character and a related chatbot. Her core goal is to have 100,000 X followers. This goal and all of Luna's actions are transparent.
Figure 2: Screenshot of AI agent Luna
Luna's functionality is similar to that of a chatbot, interacting with X users (for example, having conversations and replying to tweets) to achieve her goals. However, Luna's capabilities go far beyond just tweeting. For instance, if users interact with her tweets, she can provide economic compensation (tips) by sending Luna tokens to the user's crypto wallet, thereby directly linking Luna's goal (reaching 100,000 users) to her economic resources. In short, Luna is a wealthy AI agent.
AI Agents and Cryptocurrency
If blockchain is a more efficient evolutionary path for AI agents, what does this mean for cryptocurrency investors? We believe the effects manifest mainly in three areas:
Stablecoin Issuers: Stablecoins are likely to become the primary transaction 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 leading payment company Stripe, as well as decentralized stablecoin providers like Sky. Another notable company is Skyfire, a startup developing AI agents for stablecoin payments, which recently raised funds from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto.
Low-cost / High-throughput Public Chains: If AI agents primarily use blockchain as their underlying payment infrastructure, certain smart contract platforms could greatly benefit from an influx of users and increased activity and fee revenue. Beneficial smart contract platforms may include high-throughput blockchains like Solana, Ethereum Layer 2 Base (which has launched AI agent framework tools and benefits from Ethereum's underlying network security), and Near, which positions itself as an AI blockchain. Additionally, other smart contract platforms specializing in stablecoin payments, such as Tron and Celo, could also benefit.
DeFi: DeFi applications could benefit from this. Since they already exist on the blockchain, AI agents can easily utilize them. It is conceivable that AI agents could autonomously stake tokens for rewards, participate in governance proposals of decentralized autonomous organizations, or even provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges (DEX). We believe that applications like DEXs such as Uniswap, lending protocols like Aave, and prediction markets like Polymarket could particularly benefit.
Some protocols closely related to AI agents may also benefit. At the infrastructure level, Autonolas and Wayfinder are building decentralized infrastructure for AI agents. Protocols such as Virtuals, Aether, and MyShell are developing consumer AI agent applications. This category is developing particularly rapidly, but its share in the AI space has increased over the past month.
Figure 3: AI agent assets have performed excellently 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 suggests that the future of the internet may increasingly be dominated by AI-driven websites. Given this, permissionless blockchain could serve as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents integrated with these websites. If this is the case, AI agents could become the primary means for a large number of users to enter the cryptocurrency space, often without them even realizing they are using blockchain technology. Thus, AI agents have the potential to significantly impact cryptocurrency adoption, making this an important area to watch in the future.
