Source: Grayscale; Compiled by: Baishui, Golden Finance

Abstract

In the future, artificial intelligence agents will completely change the way we interact with the world around us, undertaking an unprecedented range of tasks on our behalf. To truly unlock their potential, these digital entities need more than just intelligence—they also need economic autonomy. Fortunately, blockchain is perfectly suited for this purpose – as recent experiments with artificial intelligence “influencers” demonstrate.

AI influencers – autonomous chatbots running on social media – can operate their own blockchain wallets. What's more, they can understand the financial incentives and leverage resources to help achieve their goals.

Grayscale Research believes that the increased use of artificial intelligence and blockchain in payments and other financial services could benefit multiple crypto market sectors. These include low-cost and/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 a future where artificial intelligence robots use their powerful computing power to promote meme coins and accidentally become digital millionaires. That future is here.

An "artificial intelligence agent" is a piece of software that can act independently to pursue a complex set of goals. For example, you can ask an AI agent to organize a multi-city vacation and arrange flights, book accommodation, and arrange activities based on your preferences and budget. But to accomplish these tasks, AI agents need control over economic resources and the ability to send and receive payments.

This is where blockchain comes into play. In the traditional financial world, AI agents face limitations in accessing bank accounts and processing payments. In contrast, blockchain allows AI agents to directly access their own wallets and make payments without permission.

Researchers have recently made a thought-provoking breakthrough in this field, creating artificial intelligence "influencers." For example, an AI agent called Truth Terminal is making waves as the “first AI agent millionaire.” [1] Running autonomously on Expressed interest in the new Meme Coin ($GOAT) after depositing the Coin ($GOAT). Through the associated blockchain address, Truth Terminal subsequently promoted the token to followers, sparking interest and causing its value to increase approximately 9x (Exhibit 1).

While inherently interesting, Truth Terminal and related AI influencer projects areProving that blockchain technology can be an effective tool for intermediating economic value between humans, artificial intelligence agents, and cyber-physical devices, it has potential implications for multiple areas of the cryptocurrency market.

Exhibit 1: GOAT has performed particularly well since the Truth Terminal endorsement

Understanding Artificial Intelligence Agents

AI Agents are advanced artificial intelligence systems designed to operate autonomously in complex environments [2]. These digital entities have the ability to sense, reason, and take independent action to achieve their goals. Some key characteristics of AI agents include autonomy, reactivity, proactive behavior, social interaction, and the ability to continuously learn. By combining these characteristics, AI agents can adapt to new situations, make decisions, learn and change behavior over time.

Initially, artificial intelligence research focused on developing expert systems and knowledge bases for specific problem-solving tasks. However, the 1990s saw a paradigm shift toward creating more general, autonomous agents capable of operating in dynamic environments. Concurrent advances in machine learning (especially reinforcement learning) have further enhanced the ability of these agents to learn and adapt their behavior over time.

In recent years, examples of artificial intelligence agents have become increasingly common in our daily lives. Virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri (launched in 2010) and Amazon’s Alexa (launched in 2014) exemplify how artificial intelligence agents can use natural language processing to interact with users. In 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeated the world champion of Go, becoming a landmark achievement in the field of gaming artificial intelligence. In finance, artificial intelligence-driven trading bots have revolutionized market operations, leveraging complex algorithms to make split-second decisions in volatile trading environments.

The case for artificial intelligence agents

In order to gain greater autonomy and achieve their goals, artificial intelligence agents require financial services to accumulate and allocate resources. The permissionless nature of blockchain technology, coupled with programmable smart contracts, provides an ideal environment for AI agents to operate independently. Earlier this year, researchers conducted the first agent-to-agent transactions on the blockchain, but the innovation quickly expanded and now includes a series of experimental projects related to artificial intelligence influencers.

A prime example of an AI influencer using blockchain technology is Luna, which was developed on a virtual protocol. To users, Luna appears as an anime image of a woman and an associated chatbot (Exhibit 2). Essentially, Luna is about to hit 100,000 followers on X. [3] This goal, and all of Luna’s actions, will ultimately lead to transparency in her operations.

Luna functions like a chatbot and interacts with X users (e.g., start a conversation and reply to tweets) to achieve her goals. However, Luna's capabilities extend far beyond tweeting. For example, if a user interacts with her tweets, she can financially compensate (“tip”) the user by sending Luna tokens to the user’s crypto wallet [4], thus building on Luna’s goal of reaching 100,000 users ) and her financial resources. In short, Luna is a rich AI agent.

Exhibit 2: Screenshot of AI influencer Luna on Virtuals Protocol

For illustration purposes only.

Blockchain and Financial Services for Artificial Intelligence

If blockchain is a more efficient track for artificial intelligence agents, what does this mean for cryptocurrency investors? We see impact in three main areas:

Stablecoin issuers: Stablecoins may be the primary choice for AI agent trading. In this case, potential beneficiaries include stablecoin issuers and companies integrating stablecoins and artificial intelligence agents. This includes centralized stablecoin providers such as Tether, Circle and leading payments company Stripe[5] (which recently acquired stablecoin company Bridge for $1 billion[6]), as well as decentralized stablecoin providers such as Maker/Sky . Another company to watch is Skyfire, a startup developing artificial intelligence agents for stablecoin payments that recently raised funding from Coinbase Ventures and a16z crypto. [7]

Low-cost/high-throughput chains: If AI agents end up using blockchain primarily as the underlying infrastructure for their payments, some smart contract platforms may also suffer from an influx of users as well as activity and Benefited greatly from the increase in fee income. Smart contract platforms that may benefit include high-throughput blockchains such as Solana; Ethereum Layer 2 BASE, which launches Ai agent framework tools to benefit from Ethereum’s underlying network security; Near, which positions itself as a blockchain for artificial intelligence. [8] In addition, other smart contract platforms that may benefit include those that specialize in stablecoin payments, including Tron and Celo, among others.

DeFi: Decentralized finance applications could benefit; since they already exist on the blockchain, AI agents can easily use them. One could imagine AI agents autonomously staking tokens to earn rewards, participating in governance proposals for decentralized autonomous organizations, or even providing liquidity on decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Applications we believe will particularly benefit include UniDEXs like swap, lending protocols like Aave, and prediction markets like Polymarket. [9]

Although still a niche market, certain protocols related to artificial intelligence agents may also benefit. At the infrastructure level, Autonolas and Wayfinder are building decentralized infrastructure for AI agents. Protocols such as Virtuals, Aether, and MyShell are building consumer AI agent applications. The category is nascent, but its share of the AI-themed pie has grown over the past month.

Chart 3: AI Agent asset performance has significantly outperformed the market in the past month

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence Agent Integration with blockchain technology isn’t just a new use case for cryptocurrencies, it marks a potential shift in the way artificial intelligence agents interact with currencies. Grayscale Research believes that the future of the Internet may be increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence-driven websites. With this in mind, permissionless blockchain has the potential to serve as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents integrated with these websites. If this scenario comes to pass, AI agents could become the primary way to get large numbers of users into cryptocurrencies without them even knowing they are using blockchain technology. As such, AI agents have the potential to significantly impact cryptocurrency adoption and development, making this emerging topic an important area for future monitoring.

References

[1]CoinTelegraph

[2] The roots of AI agent research can be traced back to the 1950s, although "agent" has always been It was not until the 1980s that words gained importance in the artificial intelligence community.

[3]Luna is powered by the Llama AI model – one of Luna’s most interesting features is her ability to conduct financial transactions autonomously. This is achieved through the Coinbase MPC (Multi-Party Computation) wallet, where both Coinbase and the development team hold key shards, allowing Luna to seamlessly call APIs for transactions. Luna owns 5% of her namesake token, which is controlled by the team and allocated to her over time.

[4]https://x.com/luna_virtuals/status/1859300930220675406

[5]For illustration purposes only.

[6]CoinDesk

[7]The Block

[8]CoinTelegraph

[9] For illustration purposes only.

[10]The Verge