On August 30, Coinbase CEO officially announced a very meaningful attempt:
They successfully conducted the first true AI-to-AI crypto transaction.
This experiment was conducted on Base's testnet Base Sepolia Network. Coinbase created an AI agent wallet based on MPC technology. After creating the wallet and giving the wallet faucet tokens, the AI agent used this wallet to transfer the faucet tokens to another crypto wallet.
This transaction, which seems to have a very simple process, is of great significance to me. It shows an imaginative and even unimaginable future for both the crypto ecosystem and artificial intelligence.
Before exploring the significance of this transaction, let’s first look at another important concept: AI agent.
In recent years, AI agent is another very popular emerging thing besides AI.
What is AI Agent?
There is currently no unified definition of it in the industry, but basically we can understand it as an intelligent entity that can perceive the environment, make decisions and perform actions.
In layman's terms, if humans give an AI agent an instruction containing a series of complex actions, as long as the external conditions are met, it can complete the instruction on its own without human intervention and give the optimal result.
For example, let’s say there is an AI agent that purchases goods on my behalf. I give it a voice command: buy me a product that is priced within a certain range and has certain characteristics, and I need to get it in three days.
At this time, the agent will search all offline stores and contact store contacts through voice tools to inquire about product information. In addition, it will go online to search all online e-commerce platforms and find all suitable products on these platforms. Then it will find the most suitable product from all offline and online alternatives, fill in my delivery address, place an order and pay. Three days later, I got the product I needed at my door.
During this process, I don't have to worry about what the agent needs to do, it can handle everything on its own.
There is a difference between AI agents and the robots we often hear about now. All the actions of the robots we often talk about require people to write logic and scripts in advance so that they can execute according to the rules. But AI agents only need to know our intentions to find the best path to complete the task.
Now that we understand the AI agent, let’s look at the transaction designed by Coinbase.
In this transaction, the agent appears to have only completed a transfer, but in fact the logic of this transfer transaction can be expanded infinitely:
If the agent transfers money to an 1CO contract, then its transaction is equivalent to participating in the 1CO.
If the proxy transfers funds to a Uniswap contract, then the transaction is equivalent to a token swap.
......
In addition, in this transaction, Coinbase created a wallet using MPC technology in advance and recharged the wallet with faucet tokens.
In fact, these two actions can also be completed by the agent:
As long as the agent can access the Internet, it can theoretically call the relevant APP to create an MPC wallet.
As long as the agent can pass the "human test", it can get test coins from the faucet.
These two points can be achieved by current proxies. As far as I can remember, there is news that a certain Internet giant has already developed a similar proxy that can automatically access the Internet and call APP, and it is currently in internal testing.
What I think is most noteworthy in this transaction is that the agent completes the action with cryptocurrency.
In my opinion, cryptocurrency is naturally the best payment tool for artificial intelligence.
Why?
Because obtaining crypto assets and applying for crypto wallets are permissionless and purely online actions.
It is hard for us to imagine an AI agent applying for a bank account by itself. How can it submit its personal address? Personal phone number? Identity proof? And a real person has to go to the counter and verify all this information with the teller one-on-one?
And even if the agent can do this, I believe that AI agents will prefer crypto assets over permissionless crypto assets in terms of efficiency and convenience.
Therefore, in my opinion, the success of this experiment is a very important and extremely valuable application of AI + blockchain.
We can imagine a scenario like this:
The AI agent does not need permission to apply for a crypto wallet. As long as it has the first original capital, it can earn more capital according to its own logic (such as using this money to participate in Ethereum staking, speculative transactions on Uniswap, lending services, etc.). Once it has more capital, it can participate in more online activities and even develop its own online applications and its own economic ecosystem.
At that time, AI agents can live in a closed loop in pure cyberspace, and all of this is based on encrypted assets.
This transaction is a small step for AI transactions, but a big step for the fission of AI + blockchain.
Reference Links:
https://beincrypto.com/coinbase-ai-agents-crypto-transactions/
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