Authors: Michael Zhao & Will Ogden Moore
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
In the future, AI agents are expected to revolutionize how 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—something that has been validated in recent experiments regarding AI 'internet celebrities.'
The so-called AI internet celebrities refer to chatbots that operate autonomously on social media. These bots can not only manage their own blockchain wallets but, more importantly, they understand economic incentive mechanisms and use resources effectively to achieve their goals.
Grayscale Research indicates that as AI increasingly utilizes blockchain for payments and other financial services, this trend will bring positive effects to multiple cryptocurrency market sectors. Beneficiaries include low-cost or high-throughput blockchains (such as SOL, BASE, and NEAR), stablecoin issuers (like MKR), and related decentralized finance (DeFi) applications (such as UNI).
Imagine a scenario where an AI robot 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 capable of independently executing tasks and pursuing 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 accomplish these tasks, AI agents need control over economic resources and the ability to send and receive payments.
This is precisely where the advantage of blockchain technology lies. In traditional financial systems, AI agents face many restrictions when accessing bank accounts and processing payments. But blockchain technology allows AI agents to directly own their digital wallets and complete payments autonomously without the need for any third-party permission. This economic autonomy paves the way for the widespread application of AI agents.
AI 'Internet Celebrity' and Breakthrough Developments in Blockchain
Recently, researchers have made remarkable breakthroughs in the field of AI 'internet celebrities.' For example, an AI agent named Truth Terminal has become the 'first AI millionaire,' sparking widespread discussion. Truth Terminal is an agent that operates autonomously on the X platform (formerly Twitter), and its behavior is similar to that of a typical human influencer: actively posting tweets and interacting with other users, clearly working to enhance user engagement.
A few months after going live, Truth Terminal showed great 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 move garnered significant market attention, causing the value of $GOAT to rise approximately 9 times in a short period (see Chart 1).
Although these projects may seem more entertainment-oriented, Truth Terminal and similar AI internet celebrity projects are proving that blockchain technology has great potential in connecting human, AI agents, and IoT devices for economic value transfer. This capability may have profound effects across multiple areas of the cryptocurrency market.
Chart 1: Since the promotion by Truth Terminal, 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 surroundings 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 capability to actively plan and execute tasks.
Social Interaction: The ability to communicate effectively with humans or other agents.
Continuous Learning: The ability to optimize 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, aimed at allowing them to operate independently in dynamic environments. At the same time, the rapid development of machine learning technologies, particularly 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 example, Apple's Siri (launched in 2010) and Amazon's Alexa (launched in 2014) have demonstrated how AI agents can interact with users using natural language processing. In the gaming domain, DeepMind's AlphaGo shocked the world in 2016 by defeating the world champion in Go, becoming a significant milestone in AI history. In the financial sector, AI-driven trading bots have utilized complex algorithms to make millisecond-level decisions in volatile markets, completely changing traditional market operations.
The Wonderful Case of AI Internet Celebrities
To achieve higher autonomy and accomplish 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 achieved agent-to-agent transactions on the blockchain for the first time. This technological breakthrough has rapidly spawned a series of experimental projects related to AI internet celebrities.
A typical case is the AI internet celebrity Luna, developed based on the Virtuals Protocol. For users, Luna is a chatbot presented as 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 primary function is similar to that of a chatbot, achieving her goals by interacting with users on the X platform (such as initiating conversations or replying to tweets). However, Luna's capabilities go far beyond this. For instance, 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 goals (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 Internet Celebrity Luna Based on the Virtuals Protocol
For illustration purposes only.
Financial Services of Blockchain and AI
If blockchain becomes an efficient payment infrastructure for AI agents, this will mean significant opportunities for cryptocurrency investors. We believe this will have profound impacts in the following 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 instance, centralized stablecoin providers like Tether and Circle, as well as the payment giant Stripe, which recently acquired the stablecoin company Bridge for $1 billion. Additionally, decentralized stablecoin providers like Maker/Sky may also become beneficiaries of this trend. Notably, startup Skyfire focuses on developing AI agents for stablecoin payments and has recently received investments from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto.
Low-cost/High-throughput Blockchains: If AI agents primarily rely on blockchains as payment infrastructure, some smart contract platforms may benefit significantly from increased user numbers and transaction activities. For example, the 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. Additionally, other blockchains that focus on stablecoin payments, such as Tron and Celo, may also benefit.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi): DeFi applications may become important tools for AI agents. Since DeFi applications run on the blockchain, AI agents can easily use these services. For instance, 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 particularly likely beneficiaries 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. On 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 currently still in its early development stage, there has been a noticeable increase in attention and market share for AI-related themes 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 how 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 integrating these websites with AI agents. If this vision is realized, AI agents could become a significant gateway for attracting a large number of users into the cryptocurrency space, often without users even realizing they are using blockchain technology.
Therefore, AI agents may have a profound impact on the popularization and technological development of cryptocurrencies. This emerging topic is undoubtedly an important field to watch closely in the future.
