Don't rush to dismiss crypto—AI is activating it

Author: Breed.vc Investment Partner Nick

Translation and compilation: BitpushNews

“Imagine around 2027, a real ‘Land of Geniuses’ emerges somewhere. Picture, say, 50 million people, each more capable than any Nobel laureate, politician, or tech expert. And imagine that because AI systems operate hundreds of times faster than humans, this ‘country’ has a time advantage over all others: every cognitive action we take, this country can take ten.” — Dario Amodei

“In our view, agents are likely to be responsible for most internet transactions very soon, and we will need blockchain.” — Stripe

We can imagine the agent economy generating creativity, economic progress, and wealth.

Last month, the crypto community predicted this economy would run on-chain, and with the largest companies, capital allocators, and developers advocating for it, this prophecy seems plausible.

We also had similar fantasies by the end of 2024, but given the typical pace of cryptocurrency development, it was still too early, and the hype was short-lived.

Since then, the quality of AI models and blockchain infrastructure has advanced enough for us to revisit this experiment.

In this report, we will examine the current state of the crypto economy, review the history of crypto agents, discuss why an on-chain agent economy might exist, explore what agents are doing today, and look ahead to what’s coming next.

The Current State of the Crypto Economy

Since the 2021 bull market, the growth of crypto assets has been disappointing. Most industry metrics are at or below 2021 levels. No crypto capital hub has emerged.

AI agents offer a credible path to expand demand.

Seeds of the Crypto Agent Revival

The meta-narrative of “AI agents on the blockchain” in 2024 is still premature. Models, infrastructure, and teams are not yet ready.

However, this isn’t all bad, as these lessons have become the seeds for today’s revival.

Projects like Bankr and Venice continue building to support current models. Companies like Coinbase and Stripe recognize the potential and are developing their own supporting infrastructure.

Combining high-quality teams with ongoing development of next-generation models marks the early stages of an on-chain agent economy.

Some projects are now generating recurring revenue and attracting top developers—like Austen Allred, Nat Eliason, and Nik Pash—which is exactly what the crypto space urgently needs.

However, the on-chain agent economy is far from guaranteed, as every payment company on Earth is racing to build this infrastructure.

Why the Agent Economy Will Run on Chain

There’s no stronger signal than Stripe explicitly stating that agents will operate on the blockchain. Their reasoning: today, every API call made by an agent requires an account, an API key, and a linked credit card. When you have thousands of agents executing millions of microtransactions daily, this model collapses.

Blockchain addresses these limitations by integrating ERC-8004, x402, and stablecoins.

• ERC-8004 grants each agent an on-chain identity, portable reputation, and verifiable credentials, which any other agent or service can query—digital equivalents of identity and credit scores.
• x402 allows agents to autonomously pay for API and service fees using stablecoins and scale micro-payments—creating an internet machine-to-machine payment layer.
• Stablecoins provide a globally accessible, programmable accounting unit that can settle transactions instantly—serving as the currency of the agent economy.

What Agents Are Doing Today

Today, agents are ramping up on-chain activity: launching applications, creating videos to promote these apps, signing contracts with other agents, handling governance for their users, selling NFTs, trading in DeFi, and even hiring humans.

The most exciting development is the interaction between agents and DeFi. Uniswap and Fluid are aligning with the agent narrative and building supporting infrastructure.

Additionally, in the past month, OpenAI announced two agent-related initiatives: Frontier, a platform to help enterprises build, deploy, and manage AI colleagues; and EVM Bench, a testing framework to evaluate AI agents’ ability to detect, patch, and exploit smart contract vulnerabilities.

The Coming of Agents

You might dismiss this as AI dystopian fiction, but the predictions of “AI 2027” are alarmingly accurate. If anything, AI progress is outpacing the proposed timeline.

If this trajectory continues, we will see exponential growth in agent capabilities and intelligence within the next year.

Key parts of the stack still need building, but every major tech company on Earth is racing to do so.

While social discussions around agents are currently intense, the reality and scale of the opportunities are too significant to ignore.

Marc Andreessen (a16z partner) put it well: “Is it real? Is it fake? It doesn’t really matter. It already exists, and models are being trained on it.”