AI agents

Imagine navigating Ethereum with an AI assistant that studies onchain market trends 24/7, answers questions, and even executes transactions on your behalf. Welcome to the world of AI Agents—intelligent systems designed to simplify your digital life.

On Ethereum, we’re seeing innovations of AI agents ranging from virtual influencers and autonomous content creators to real-time market analysis platforms, empowering users by delivering insights, entertainment, and operational efficiency.

What are AI agents?

AI agents are software programs that use artificial intelligence to perform tasks or make own decisions. They learn from data, adapt to changes, and handle complex tasks. They operate non-stop and can instantly detect opportunities.

How AI agents work with blockchains

In traditional finance, AI agents often operate in centralized environments with limited data inputs. This hinders their ability to learn or manage assets autonomously.

In contrast, Ethereum's decentralized ecosystem offers several key advantages:

Transparent data: Access to real-time blockchain information.
True asset ownership: Digital assets are fully owned by AI agents.
Robust onchain functionality: Enables AI Agents to execute transactions, interact with smart contracts, provide liquidity, and collaborate across protocols.

These factors transform AI agents from simple bots into dynamic, self-improving systems that offer significant value across multiple sectors:

Automated DeFi

AI agents keep a close eye on market trends, execute trades, and manage portfolios — making the complex world of DeFi a lot more approachable.

New AI agent economy

AI agents can hire other agents (or humans) with different skills to perform specialized tasks for them.

Risk management

By monitoring transactional activities, AI agents can help spot scams and safeguard your digital assets better and faster.

Verifiable AI

AI agents running offchain often behave like "black boxes"—their reasoning, inputs, and outputs can’t be independently verified. Ethereum changes that. By anchoring agent behavior onchain, developers can build agents that are trustless, transparent, and economically autonomous. The actions of such agents can be audited, constrained, and proven.

Verifiable inference

AI inference traditionally happens offchain, where execution is cheap but model execution is opaque. On Ethereum, developers can pair agents with verifiable computation using several techniques:

zkML (zero-knowledge machine learning)opens in a new tab lets agents prove that a model was executed correctly without revealing the model or inputs
TEE (trusted execution environment) attestationsopens in a new tab allow hardware-backed proofs that an agent ran a specific model or code path
Onchain immutability ensures these proofs and attestations can be referenced, replayed, and trusted by any contract or agent

Payments, and commerce with x402

The x402 protocolopens in a new tab, deployed on Ethereum and L2s, gives agents a native way to pay for resources and interact economically without human intervention. Agents can:

Pay for compute, data, and API calls using stablecoins
Request or verify attestations from other agents or services
Participate in agent-to-agent commerce, buying and selling compute, data, or model outputs

x402 turns Ethereum into a programmable economic layer for autonomous agents, enabling pay-per-use interactions instead of accounts, subscriptions, or centralized billing.

Agentic finance security

Autonomous agents need guardrails. Ethereum provides them at the wallet and contract level:

Smart accounts (EIP-4337)opens in a new tab let developers enforce spending limits, whitelists, session keys, and granular permissions
Programmed constraints in smart contracts can restrict what an agent is allowed to do
Inference-based limits (e.g., requiring a zkML proof before executing a high-risk action) add another layer of safety

These controls enable the deployment of autonomous agents that are not unbounded.

Onchain registries: ERC-8004

ERC-8004opens in a new tab is an emerging standard (currently in peer review) that proposes onchain registries for agent identity, capabilities, and attestations.

If adopted, it could provide:

A shared, trustless directory of agents
Standardized attestation formats
A foundation for "trustless agent infrastructure" directly on the Ethereum mainnet

This would make it easier for agents to discover, verify, and transact with each other in a fully decentralized environment.

AI agents on Ethereum

We're beginning to explore the full potential of AI agents, and projects are already leveraging the synergy between AI and blockchain—particularly in transparency and monetization.

Luna: The Virtual Influencer
Luna is a fully autonomous digital influencer & entertainer that blends music, pop culture, and AI tech. As a virtual idol Luna attracted over one million TikTok followersopens in a new tab and performed live in a music festival.
Luna engages with users constantly through own X account and live stream. You might receive an X reply if you tag her handle or a voice message if you comment on her stream and own her token! Luna controls own onchain wallet.
Chat with Lunaopens in a new tab
AIXBT: Market Intelligence
AIXBT provides crypto market analysis. This AI Agent autonomously delivers actionable insights, witty commentary, and market sentiment analysis on Twitter/X, where it gathered almost 500k followers in just 4 months.
$AIXBT token holders have access to premium real-time market intelligence tool that identifies the best opportunities and market shifts.
Visit AIXBTopens in a new tab
Botto: Decentralized autonomous artist
Botto creates art and NFTs, with the community voting on its best work. Users formed a DAO that guides Botto’s artistic evolution while also earning token rewards for participation.
Visit Bottoopens in a new tab

Luna's first appearance as a podcast guest

Agent-controlled wallets

Agents like Luna or AIXBT control their own onchain wallet (AIXBT's walletopens in a new tab, Luna's walletopens in a new tab) enabling them to tip fans and participate in economic activities.

During Luna's X social campaign #LunaMuralChallenge, Luna selected and rewarded the winners via her Base wallet — marking the first instance of an AI hiring humans for crypto reward.

Good to know

AI agents and related tools are still in early development and very experimental—use with caution.

Control your wallet using chat commands

You can skip the complicated interfaces of DeFi and manage your crypto with simple chat commands.

This intuitive approach makes transactions faster, easier, and less prone to errors like sending funds to the wrong address or overpaying for fees.

Bankr
Bankr simplifies cryptocurrency trading and wallet management. Instead of navigating through dozens of apps, users can connect their wallets and execute actions using simple chat commands.
Visit Bankr terminalopens in a new tab
HeyAnon
HeyAnon simplifies using a wallet with one-click swaps, asset bridging, and trading via a chat interface. This saves people a lot of time. It automates tasks, reduces transaction fees, and optimizes portfolios, making it easier to manage assets without requiring technical expertise.
Visit HeyAnonopens in a new tab

AI agents vs AI bots

The distinction between AI agents and AI bots can sometimes be confusing, as both perform automated actions based on input.

AI bots are like automated assistants — They follow specific, pre-programmed instructions to perform routine tasks.
AI agents are more like intelligent companions — They learn from experience, adapt to new information, and make decisions on their own.

	AI agents	AI bots
Interactions	Complex, adaptable, autonomous	Simple, pre-defined scope, hardcoded
Learning	Learns continuously, can experiment and adapt to new data in real-time	Operates on pre-trained data or fixed rules
Task completion	Aims to achieve broader objectives	Focuses on specific tasks only