Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Unlocking the Potential of Crypto
A New Era of Foundation Models
The rapid advancement of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) has brought about a significant shift in the new era of foundation models. By definition, agentic AI refers to systems that not only produce outputs but also execute actions within a given environment. This paradigm is revolutionizing automation scenarios such as responding to emails, interacting with databases, calling APIs, and even performing physical tasks in an embodied AI setting like robotic tasks.
Unlike previous automation paradigms, agentic AI has the potential to enable agents to achieve semi- or full autonomy within their environments. A near future where tens of millions of semi-autonomous agents become integral to business and personal ecosystems is not too far-fetched. Crypto assets could serve as a fundamental representation of the world these AI agents interact with, making crypto potentially become the currency of AI.
The Fragmented State of Agent Market
To understand the potential of AI agents using crypto, it’s essential to assess the fragmented state of the current agent market. The promise of semi-autonomous agents has triggered an explosion of frameworks for building them, far surpassing market readiness. While most organizations recognize the potential of autonomous agents, they remain in the early stages of adoption.
As a result, we see numerous agent demos but very few production-ready products. This is significant because the intersection of crypto and autonomous agents relies heavily on the maturity of the latter market. In a world where millions of autonomous agents augment our business and personal tasks, crypto could enhance these capabilities. There are several hypotheses about this augmentation, ranging from coordination to monitoring.
The Greatest Opportunity Lies in the Financial Domain
If we think of autonomous agents as extensions of our business and professional workflows, then e-commerce will be a crucial component of interactions between humans and agents, as well as between agents themselves. And crypto represents the most promising opportunity to unlock this potential.
E-commerce has been central to the evolution of the internet. PayPal unlocked many early e-commerce workflows, and platforms like Stripe have fully catalyzed this transformation. If AI agents become the fabric of the intelligent internet, financial transactions will be a key component of this new layer.
The Programmability of Crypto
The programmability of crypto makes it an excellent fit for enabling payment capabilities in AI agents. But what scenarios make crypto ideal for agentic workflows while highlighting the limitations of fiat?
Options in Today’s Market
We have three options in today’s market:
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Programmable Fiat
Programmable fiat platforms like Stripe offer a low barrier to entry for enabling financial transactions in multi-agent systems. However, programmable fiat presents challenges with cross-border payments, lengthy dispute resolution processes, and the complexity of performance-based payment triggers, making it suboptimal for agentic workflows. -
Stablecoins
Stablecoins represent a natural intersection between AI and Web3. They address some of fiat’s limitations in agentic workflows, offering on-chain settlements, global availability, and enhanced programmability. However, stablecoins fall short in key areas. They are primarily payment tokens and lack functionality linked to agent performance. -
A Native Agent Cryptocurrency and Payment Protocol
The true intersection of Web3 and agentic AI for financial transactions could emerge through new tokens and protocols tailored for this use case. These could extend stablecoin capabilities by integrating agent-specific functionalities, such as staking for quality control, slashing policies to penalize poor performance, validators to resolve disputes based on task quality, and directly tying agents’ reputations to their token stakes.
Agentic AI Has the Potential to Drive Crypto’s Emergence
Agentic AI has the potential to become one of the most fertile intersections between Web3 and AI. Semi-autonomous agents will become ubiquitous, requiring robust financial infrastructure for transactions. While programmable fiat may address initial needs, its limitations highlight crypto’s potential to shine. Stablecoins offer a promising start, but they may not suffice in the long run.
The rise of agentic AI is likely to drive the creation of custom tokens, wallets, protocols, and possibly blockchains optimized for agentic workflows. Agents could become the gateway for crypto to emerge as the true currency of AI.
