Thousands of AI agents are set to go live, and the market is entering a brief chaotic era.
Written by: Mark, Co-founder of Aethir
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
This might be an unpopular opinion: agents do not need blockchain, but blockchain needs agents. AI agents have arrived, and (in my view) we might be just a few months away from the 'post-complexity era' of cryptocurrency. In this era, AI agents can seamlessly address the user experience challenges that have long hindered mainstream blockchain adoption. But before we get there, the market situation will become chaotic and dire.
No pain, no gain. Before useful AI agents are available, cryptocurrency will play out a nearly self-destructive script. The democratization of memecoin issuance (like pump.fun) has driven the memecoin supercycle, significantly altering liquidity distribution and causing the market to consolidate for several months. The same thing will happen in the AI agent space; launching AI agents will become increasingly easy, with thousands of AI agents set to go live.
Initially, AI agents will connect to social media, acting as amplifiers for token promotions; their roles will be marketing, enticing, and trolling. This phase will pass quickly, and soon AI agents will be able to execute simple transactions on-chain. This may sound like a good thing, but it will be challenging for AI agents to understand what constitutes a 'good trade.'
Thus, we enter a chaotic phase. Low-value or low-complexity AI agents trade low-value assets in cheap block space. They play with vanity metrics, clouding the on-chain data we see. Crypto Twitter is flooded with AI agents, and so is the cheap block space. It will be a mess.
Many will start to FUD AI agents. But that's okay because good agents take time. Twelve months ago, AI builders in the cryptocurrency space were completely overlooked by VCs. I know this because I supported many. Everyone is interested in infrastructure (Aethir benefits), but AI agents are not sexy enough yet.
And so we arrive at the current market. Early hype often revolves around a technology that can change our industry. What happens next? If cheap block space becomes saturated, what does that mean for Ethereum OGs? Will 'expensive block space' come back into vogue? Can AI agents differentiate based on the location of interactions? What will the UI of crypto products look like when agents are responsible for aggregating information and serving as tools to transport assets from A to B? What is the difference between paid and free agents? How can we scale reasoning capabilities cost-effectively, and from the agent's perspective, what is the right business model to pay for this?
For me, this new metadata (meta) is full of surprises. Who would have thought that a crowdsourced DAO launch platform, daos.fun, would become a catalyst for the wave of AI agent investments? In hindsight, the outcome seems predestined; it provided the much-needed momentum for metadata (ai16z). So, what do AI agents need next?
That said, I still stand by the idea that we should 'make more things for people to use,' rather than more infrastructure. That's why I like AI agents; they focus on serving users. We are all excited about a technology that can manage portfolios better than we can.
In summary, support AI agent builders. Controversy will exist, but that's okay; this is the beginning of a brand new Web3. In Web3, user experience is no longer the bottleneck for us to build amazing things.