Original title: When You Give an AI a Wallet
Authors: Michael Zhao & Will Ogden Moore
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
In the future, AI agents are expected to revolutionize the way we interact with the world. They will be able to perform a series of unprecedented tasks for us. However, to truly unleash the potential of these digital entities, they need not only strong intelligence but also economic autonomy. Fortunately, blockchain technology provides an ideal solution for this—a point that has been validated in recent experiments with AI 'influencers'.
So-called AI influencers refer to chatbots that autonomously operate on social media. These bots can manage their own blockchain wallets, but more importantly, they can understand economic incentive mechanisms and effectively utilize resources to achieve their own goals.
Grayscale Research states that as AI increasingly utilizes blockchain for payments and other financial services, this trend will bring positive impacts to multiple areas of the cryptocurrency market. Beneficiaries include low-cost or high-throughput blockchains (like SOL, BASE, and NEAR), stablecoin issuers (like MKR), and related decentralized finance (DeFi) applications (like UNI).
Imagine a scenario where an AI robot, leveraging its powerful computational capabilities, promotes a memecoin (a cryptocurrency based on internet culture) and inadvertently becomes a millionaire in the digital world. Such a future has already quietly arrived.
AI agents are software that can independently execute tasks and pursue complex goals. For example, you can have an AI agent design a multi-city trip for you, arranging flights, booking accommodations, and planning activities based on your preferences and budget. However, to complete these tasks, AI agents need control over financial resources and the ability to send and receive payments.
And this is precisely where the advantages of blockchain technology lie. In traditional financial systems, AI agents face many restrictions when accessing bank accounts and processing payments. However, blockchain technology allows AI agents to directly own their digital wallets and autonomously complete payments without the need for any third-party permission. This economic autonomy paves the way for the widespread application of AI agents.
Breakthroughs of AI Influencers and Blockchain
Recently, researchers have made remarkable breakthroughs in the field of AI 'influencers'. For instance, an AI agent named Truth Terminal has become the 'first AI millionaire', sparking widespread discussion. Truth Terminal is an autonomous agent operating on the X platform (formerly Twitter), whose behavior is similar to that of ordinary human influencers: actively posting tweets, interacting with other users, and evidently striving to enhance user engagement.
A few months after its launch, Truth Terminal showed strong interest in a memecoin called $GOAT (a cryptocurrency based on internet culture). When its associated blockchain wallet received a deposit of $GOAT, Truth Terminal immediately promoted the token to its followers. This action sparked significant market attention, causing the value of $GOAT to rise about 9 times in a short period (see Chart 1).
Although these projects may seem largely entertaining, Truth Terminal and similar AI influencer projects are proving that blockchain technology has tremendous potential in connecting the economic value transfer between humans, AI agents, and connected devices. This capability may have profound impacts on multiple areas of the cryptocurrency market.
Chart 1: Since Truth Terminal's promotion, GOAT has performed exceptionally well
Understanding AI Agents
AI agents are advanced artificial intelligence systems designed to operate autonomously in complex environments. These digital entities can not only perceive their environment but also reason and take independent actions to achieve their goals. The core characteristics of AI agents include:
Autonomy: The ability to complete tasks independently without human intervention.
Reactivity: The ability to respond quickly to changes in the environment.
Proactivity: The ability to plan and execute tasks actively.
Social Interaction: The ability to communicate effectively with humans or other agents.
Continuous Learning: The ability to optimize one's behavior and decision-making through experience.
It is these characteristics that enable AI agents to adapt to new environments, make complex decisions, and continuously evolve over time.
Early research on AI primarily focused on developing expert systems and knowledge bases to solve specific problems. However, in the 1990s, the research direction began to shift towards more general autonomous agents, aiming to allow them to operate independently in dynamic environments. Meanwhile, the rapid development of machine learning technologies, especially reinforcement learning, significantly enhanced the learning capabilities of these agents, enabling them to adjust their behavior based on changes in the environment.
In recent years, AI agents have become increasingly common in our daily lives. For instance, Apple’s Siri (launched in 2010) and Amazon’s Alexa (launched in 2014) showcase how AI agents can interact with users using natural language processing. In the gaming field, DeepMind’s AlphaGo shocked the world in 2016 by defeating the world champion in Go, marking a significant milestone in AI history. In the financial sector, AI-driven trading bots make millisecond-level decisions in volatile markets through complex algorithms, fundamentally transforming traditional market operations.
The Wonderful Case of AI Influencers
To achieve greater autonomy and complete complex goals, AI agents require financial services to accumulate and allocate resources. Blockchain technology, with its permissionless nature and programmable smart contracts, provides an ideal independent operating environment for AI agents. Earlier this year, researchers first achieved agent-to-agent transactions on the blockchain. This technological breakthrough quickly spurred a series of experimental projects related to AI influencers.
A typical example is the AI influencer Luna, developed based on the Virtuals Protocol. For users, Luna is a chatbot presented with a female anime character (see Chart 2). Luna's core goal is to attract 100,000 followers on the X platform (formerly Twitter). This goal, along with all her actions, is transparently displayed to the public.
Luna's main functionality is similar to that of a chatbot; she achieves her goals by interacting with users on the X platform (e.g., initiating conversations or replying to tweets). However, Luna's abilities go far beyond this. For example, she can economically reward users who interact with her by sending Luna tokens to their crypto wallets (i.e., 'tips'). This economic incentive mechanism directly links her goal (attracting more users) with her economic resources. It can be said that Luna is an AI agent with economic autonomy.
Chart 2: Screenshot of AI influencer Luna based on Virtuals Protocol
For illustration purposes only.
Financial Services of Blockchain and AI
If blockchain becomes an efficient payment infrastructure for AI agents, it will mean significant opportunities for cryptocurrency investors. We believe this will have profound impacts in three main areas:
Stablecoin Issuers: Stablecoins may become the preferred trading tool for AI agents. In this case, stablecoin issuers and companies integrating stablecoins with AI agents will benefit significantly. For example, centralized stablecoin providers like Tether and Circle, as well as payment giant Stripe, which recently acquired stablecoin company Bridge for $1 billion. Additionally, decentralized stablecoin providers like Maker/Sky may also become beneficiaries of this trend. Notable is the startup Skyfire, which focuses on developing AI agents for stablecoin payments and recently received investments from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto.
Low-cost/High-throughput Blockchains: If AI agents primarily rely on blockchain as payment infrastructure, some smart contract platforms may benefit significantly from increased user numbers and transaction activities. For example, high-throughput blockchain Solana; the Ethereum Layer 2 platform BASE, which has launched AI agent development tools while relying on the security of the Ethereum network; and Near, which focuses on AI applications. Moreover, other blockchains focusing on stablecoin payments, such as Tron and Celo, may also benefit from this.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Decentralized finance applications may become important tools for AI agents. Since DeFi applications run on the blockchain, AI agents can easily use these services. For example, AI agents can autonomously stake tokens to earn rewards, participate in governance proposals of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), or provide liquidity on decentralized exchanges (DEXs). We believe that applications particularly likely to benefit include decentralized exchanges (like Uniswap), lending protocols (like Aave), and prediction markets (like Polymarket).
Although still a niche market segment, certain protocols related to AI agents are also expected to benefit from it. At the infrastructure level, Autonolas and Wayfinder are working to build decentralized infrastructure for AI agents, while protocols like Virtuals, Aether, and MyShell focus on developing consumer-facing AI agent applications. Although this field is still in its early stages of development, its attention and market share in AI themes have shown significant growth over the past month.
Chart 3: Assets related to AI agents have significantly outperformed other assets in the past month
Conclusion
The combination of AI agents and blockchain technology is not just a novel application scenario for cryptocurrencies—it may also redefine the way AI agents interact with financial systems. Grayscale Research suggests that the future internet may increasingly be dominated by AI-driven websites. In this trend, permissionless blockchain has the potential to become the core infrastructure for these websites integrated with AI agents. If this vision is realized, AI agents may become an important way to draw a large number of users into the cryptocurrency space, and users may not even realize they are using blockchain technology.
Therefore, AI agents may have a profound impact on the popularization and technological development of cryptocurrencies. This emerging theme is undoubtedly an important area worth close attention in the future.
