Original Article Title: When You Given an AI a Wallet

Original Article Authors: Michael Zhao, Will Ogden Moore, Grayscale

Original Article Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

· In the future, AI agents are expected to completely revolutionize the way we interact with the world. They will be able to perform a range of unprecedented tasks for us. However, to truly unleash the potential of these digital entities, they need not only powerful intelligence but also economic autonomy. Fortunately, blockchain technology provides an ideal solution for this—this was demonstrated in a recent experiment involving an AI "influencer."

· The so-called AI influencers refer to autonomous chatbots that operate on social media. These bots can not only manage their own blockchain wallets but, more importantly, they can understand economic incentives and effectively utilize resources to achieve their goals.

· Grayscale Research states that as AI increasingly leverages blockchain for payments and other financial services, this trend will have a positive impact on various cryptocurrency market areas. This includes benefiting low-cost or high-throughput blockchains (such as SOL, BASE, and NEAR), stablecoin issuers (such as MKR), and related decentralized finance (DeFi) applications (such as UNI).

Imagine this scenario: an AI bot, with its powerful computing capabilities, promotes a memecoin (a cryptocurrency based on internet culture) and unexpectedly becomes a millionaire in the digital world. Such a future is already quietly approaching.

An AI agent is a type of software that can independently perform tasks and pursue complex objectives. For instance, you can have an AI agent plan a multi-city trip for you, arranging flights, accommodations, and activities based on your preferences and budget. However, to accomplish these tasks, the AI agent needs control over economic resources and the capability to send and receive payments.

This is where the advantage of blockchain technology lies. In the traditional financial system, 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 independently make payments without any third-party permission. This economic autonomy paves the way for the widespread application of AI agents.

The Breakthrough of AI "Influencers" and Blockchain

Recently, researchers have achieved a remarkable breakthrough in the field of AI "influencers." For example, an AI entity called Truth Terminal has become the "first AI millionaire," sparking widespread discussions. Truth Terminal is an AI agent that operates autonomously on the X platform (formerly Twitter). Its behavior is similar to that of a human social media influencer: actively posting tweets, engaging with other users, seemingly striving to increase user engagement.

After being online for a few months, Truth Terminal showed a strong interest in a memecoin called $GOAT (a cryptocurrency based on internet culture). When its associated blockchain wallet received a $GOAT deposit, Truth Terminal promptly promoted the token to its followers. This move attracted significant market attention, causing the value of $GOAT to surge by approximately 9x in a short period (see Chart 1).

While these projects may seem more entertainment-oriented, Truth Terminal and similar AI influencer projects are proving that blockchain technology has enormous potential in facilitating economic value exchange between humans, AI agents, and IoT devices. This capability could have profound implications for various sectors of the cryptocurrency market.

Chart 1: Outstanding Performance of GOAT Since Truth Terminal Promotion

Understanding AI Agents

AI agents are advanced artificial intelligence systems designed to operate autonomously in complex environments. These digital entities can perceive their environment, reason, and take independent actions to achieve their goals. The key characteristics of AI agents include:

· Autonomy: Capable of completing tasks independently without human intervention.

· Reactivity: Able to react quickly to changes in the environment.

· Proactiveness: Possessing the ability to plan and execute tasks proactively.

· Social Interaction: Able to engage in effective communication with humans or other intelligent agents.

· Lifelong Learning: Continuously optimizing their behavior and decisions through experience.

It is these features that allow AI agents to adapt to new environments, make complex decisions, and evolve over time.

Early AI research primarily focused on developing expert systems and knowledge bases to solve specific problems. However, in the 1990s, the research direction shifted towards more general autonomous agents designed to operate independently in dynamic environments. At the same time, the rapid development of machine learning techniques, particularly reinforcement learning, significantly enhanced the learning capabilities of these agents, enabling them to adjust their behavior based on environmental changes.

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) demonstrate how AI agents utilize natural language processing to interact with users. In the gaming field, DeepMind's AlphaGo shocked the world in 2016 by defeating the world champion in the game of Go, marking a significant milestone in AI history. In the financial sector, AI-driven trading bots have transformed the traditional market operations by making millisecond decisions using sophisticated algorithms in volatile markets.

The Fascinating Cases of AI Influencers

To achieve greater 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 environment for AI agents to operate independently. Earlier this year, researchers achieved agent-to-agent transactions on the blockchain for the first time. This technological breakthrough rapidly gave rise to a series of experimental projects related to AI influencers.

A typical case is Luna, an AI influencer developed based on the Virtuals Protocol. For users, Luna is a chatbot presented in the form of a female anime character (see Figure 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 a chatbot, interacting with X platform users (e.g., initiating conversations or replying to tweets) to achieve her goal. However, Luna's capabilities go beyond this. For instance, she can economically reward (i.e., "tip") users who interact with her by sending Luna tokens to their crypto wallets. This economic incentive mechanism directly connects her goal (attracting more users) with her economic resources. It can be said that Luna is an AI agent with economic autonomy.

Figure 2: Screenshot of AI Influencer Luna based on the Virtuals Protocol for illustrative purposes only.

Blockchain and AI in Financial Services

If blockchain becomes the efficient payment infrastructure for AI agents, this would represent a significant opportunity for cryptocurrency investors. We believe this will have a profound impact in the following three main areas:

1. Stablecoin Issuers: Stablecoins may become the preferred transaction tool for AI agents. In this scenario, stablecoin issuers and companies integrating stablecoins with AI agents will significantly benefit. For example, centralized stablecoin providers like Tether and Circle, as well as payment giants like Stripe, who recently acquired the stablecoin company Bridge for $1 billion. Additionally, decentralized stablecoin providers like Maker/Sky may also benefit from this trend. Noteworthy is the startup Skyfire, a company focused on developing AI agents for stablecoin payments, which recently received investments from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto.

2. Low-Cost/High-Throughput Blockchains: If AI agents heavily rely on blockchain as the payment infrastructure, some smart contract platforms may greatly benefit from increased user numbers and transaction volumes. For example, high-throughput blockchains like Solana; AI agent development tools launched by BASE, an Ethereum Layer 2 platform leveraging Ethereum's network security; and Near, which focuses on AI applications. Additionally, other blockchains focused on stablecoin payments, such as Tron and Celo, may also benefit.

3. Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Decentralized finance applications could become crucial tools for AI agents. Since DeFi apps run on the blockchain, AI agents can easily utilize 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 such as decentralized exchanges (e.g., Uniswap), lending protocols (e.g., Aave), and prediction markets (e.g., Polymarket) are particularly poised to benefit.

While still a niche sector, some AI Avatar-related protocols are also poised to benefit from this. At the infrastructure level, Autonolas and Wayfinder are working to build decentralized infrastructure for AI Avatars, while protocols like Virtuals, Aether, and MyShell are focusing on developing consumer-facing AI Avatar applications. Although this field is still in its early stages of development, over the past month, it has seen a significant increase in attention and market share within the AI theme.

Chart 3: AI Avatar-related assets have outperformed significantly in the past month compared to other assets

Conclusion

The integration of AI Avatars with blockchain technology is not just a novel use case for cryptocurrency—it could also redefine how AI Avatars interact with the financial system. Grayscale Research suggests that the future internet may be increasingly dominated by AI-driven websites. In this trend, permissionless blockchains have the potential to become the core infrastructure for integrating these websites with AI Avatars. If this vision comes to fruition, AI Avatars could become a significant gateway to attract a large number of users to the cryptocurrency space, with users potentially unaware that they are using blockchain technology.

Therefore, AI Avatars could have a profound impact on the adoption and technological advancement of cryptocurrency. This emerging theme is undoubtedly an important area to watch closely in the future.

Original Article Link

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