Autonomous AI Agents: Where AI meets Crypto

Every once in a while, a new technology comes along that gets me so excited, I find myself thinking about it all the time, consuming as much information about it as I can, and experimenting with how it works.

What’s currently got me in this state of frenzy are Autonomous AI agents, which is basically the intersection of AI and crypto. 

You’re probably already aware of AI and crypto, and probably already use ChatGPT and own some Bitcoin, but you may be thinking, how can they possibly be related? 

Before I get into HOW they’re related, let me first start with WHY you would relate AI with crypto in the first place. 

Why AI needs crypto ❓

There are 3 main reasons that AI tools started experimenting with using crypto and the blockchain.

1. The first issue is about reducing spam. You may have heard the “dead internet” theory (about how most of the content online is AI generated and not written by humans), and you probably noticed a drop in the quality of content online (not here on LinkedIn of course, it’s a paragon of intellectual content over here).
   
   Crypto solves this by adding friction & artificial scarcity (since you need to pay to have transactions be stored on the blockchain) and can add verification too (there are many web3 projects that are building unique ID verification solutions to confirm users are human like WorldID, BrightID and Passport for “sybil resistance”).
   
   You can also use the blockchain to verify content is “true”, for example from a trusted news source or if it’s really posted by a celebrity or politician.
   

2. The second issue crypto solves for AI is payments. A lot of the actions that happen online involve some form of payment (signing up for a service, paying for labor, paying for server costs etc.) AI models can’t exactly walk down to their local bank and get a credit card, but they can interact with smart contracts, which means they can interact with crypto, which means they can access payments.
   

3. The third intersection of AI with crypto is with using money as a form of energy and coordination that involves innovating in our capitalistic system. There is no better way to organize people around a movement and to get excited about AI than to have them invest directly in the AI itself. By unlocking a monetary component to AI, and having a token, AI’s can coordinate with human society at large, and soon even between AI’s. 

So now you probably see that there could be a lot of reasons why you may want to link AI with crypto. Now, let’s get into how it’s currently being done by AI agents. 

🐐 Truth Terminal & Goatsie

Let’s start our story with Truth Terminal, which was an AI that was launched a few months ago by Andy Ayrey that has its own X account it posts on. It was initially given a donation $50K by Marc Andreessen (of Netscape, a16z and Joe Rogan fame). With that money, Truth Terminal coordinated with others to launch a token called Goatsie ($GOAT), which is a crypto token launched on Solana to get people excited about the project. The AI itself (Truth Terminal) “chose” to launch a token & support the GOAT token (with some minimal help from its creator and others in the community). 

What has it done since then? The AI launched a NSFW music album on Sound Cloud to promote itself and is tweeting about the GOAT token on a new account it created. What’s even more interesting is that the album was written, produced and posted completely by the AI agent using other AI tools. The only thing that the human behind it claims they did was create the SoundCloud account for them and gave them access to it! 

📊 ai16z dao

Another project that became popular around the same time was ai16z (I know it’s confusing, but it took its name as an homage to the a16z investment firm, but with an “i” in it). It was launched by an AI developer called Shaw - as a DAO (a decentralized autonomous organization) with the goal of being a better investor than the real a16z and to “beat” Marc Andreessen and friends, and it also launched a token to support itself (ai16z on Solana).

🤖 aixbt

There is also a third AI agent called aixbt, which also launched a token (aixbt on the Base L2 chain). Its goal is mainly to produce content on social media and give insights on the crypto industry. aixbt was launched on the Virtuals Platform, which is kind of like a web3 Kickstarter for this new breed of crypto AI agents. 

So you can see that these Autonomous AI Agents are already: creating tokens, creating investment strategies, creating art, creating music albums, and producing high quality content all on their own (with very minimal human involvement). 

Keep in mind this is a bleeding edge field. A lot of these projects are barely a month old, and no one knows what’s going to happen to them, but if you’d like to explore more, I recommend you follow some of the projects I mentioned above and get involved (you just need a web3 wallet on Solana or Base). 

Stay curious! ✌️

Ahmad