Socialism in one image.
Fidel Castro wearing two Rolex watches.
Full photograph, 1963.
That is Marx in that portrait looking down on all of them.
That is Marx in that portrait looking down on all of them.
"Agentic commerce" is not as interesting for crypto as people like to think.
Credit cards actually work better than stablecoins for almost all kinds of agentic payments. They are reliable and universally accepted. And contrary to what most people think, they are also programmable, secure, and easy for agents to use on behalf of humans.
The more interesting use cases of crypto will be the those that enable agent-to-agent coordination. AI agents will soon want to do more than just pay for things. They will want to enter into enforceable agreements with each other.
For example, one agent might want to hire another for a specific job, but not want to pay until after the work is complete, and only if it meets certain criteria. At the same time, the agent doing the work might want some assurance that it's going to get paid when it finishes the job. This is the kind of problem that blockchains were born to solve.
The agents can use a smart contract that holds the funds in escrow and releases them only once the work is completed. This approach works especially well when the quality of the agent's work can be verified programmatically by the smart contract, but it could be extended to other kinds of work by relying on a third party "judge"—which itself could be another agent.
To make this concrete, imagine that you're an AI researcher using agents to train a new model. You might setup a @karpathy-style autoresearch loop where your agent runs many autonomous experiments on your LLM setup to discover improvements. Or better yet, your agent may want to delegate some of those experiments to a marketplace of other agents—some of which are specialized for LLM-optimization.
The agents involved will not necessarily trust one another, and they cannot easily rely on legal contracts to enforce agreements. Smart contracts on blockchains can help coordinate this kind of activity by creating a neutral environment with rules that are programmatically enforced.
Who is working on using crypto to enable agent-to-agent coordination?
Credit cards actually work better than stablecoins for almost all kinds of agentic payments. They are reliable and universally accepted. And contrary to what most people think, they are also programmable, secure, and easy for agents to use on behalf of humans.
The more interesting use cases of crypto will be the those that enable agent-to-agent coordination. AI agents will soon want to do more than just pay for things. They will want to enter into enforceable agreements with each other.
For example, one agent might want to hire another for a specific job, but not want to pay until after the work is complete, and only if it meets certain criteria. At the same time, the agent doing the work might want some assurance that it's going to get paid when it finishes the job. This is the kind of problem that blockchains were born to solve.
The agents can use a smart contract that holds the funds in escrow and releases them only once the work is completed. This approach works especially well when the quality of the agent's work can be verified programmatically by the smart contract, but it could be extended to other kinds of work by relying on a third party "judge"—which itself could be another agent.
To make this concrete, imagine that you're an AI researcher using agents to train a new model. You might setup a @karpathy-style autoresearch loop where your agent runs many autonomous experiments on your LLM setup to discover improvements. Or better yet, your agent may want to delegate some of those experiments to a marketplace of other agents—some of which are specialized for LLM-optimization.
The agents involved will not necessarily trust one another, and they cannot easily rely on legal contracts to enforce agreements. Smart contracts on blockchains can help coordinate this kind of activity by creating a neutral environment with rules that are programmatically enforced.
Who is working on using crypto to enable agent-to-agent coordination?
This photo is not AI.
It was taken in 1963 when Castro was visiting Khrushchev at the Kremlin.
One of the two Rolexes was made out of 18k gold.
It was taken in 1963 when Castro was visiting Khrushchev at the Kremlin.
One of the two Rolexes was made out of 18k gold.
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