Opinion by: Tomer Warschauer Nuni, chief marketing officer of Kima Network
No one should be surprised that the crypto space is actively discussing the new wave of enthusiasm around AI and its limitless uses. According to proponents, AI represents the most promising approach to enhancing blockchain technologies and decentralized applications, driving greater autonomy and efficiency across the ecosystem.
The use of AI agents in crypto trading and interoperability between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) has been quite fruitful. They also help improve user experience within the ecosystem and play a key role in enhancing the scalability of blockchain networks as they grow.
In December 2024, VanEck reported that AI agents were already numbering 10,000 and that they were expected to reach 1 million in 2025. This projected growth shows how seemingly inevitable this future is for believers and skeptics alike.
The current state of AI agents in the digital world
It is easy to see why everyone is excited about integrating AI agents into nearly every digital process. They enhance several processes with no or less effort from humans.
Current challenges, however, including the ethical concerns identified by the Vatican, do not allow for their full adoption. Crypto investors also felt the heat after DeepSeek’s release, which led to a massive market loss. This risk-to-reward analysis may well be used to discuss the necessity of AI agents in the crypto industry.
The market capitalization of AI agents in crypto rose 322% in the fourth quarter of 2024, from $4.8 billion to $15.5 billion, indicating that more people in the crypto community are accepting AI. The phenomenon of the absolute autonomy of systems is not so far away if we look at the advantages.
AI agents’ trading, analysis and risk management capabilities are widely reported to be better than those of humans. Every decision made in the market is made quickly and is strongly supported by as much data as possible, reducing human errors that can cause losses.
There are some good indications of this potential. Edwin is a project that aims to combine AI and decentralized finance, enabling the easy integration of AI agents built on top of frameworks like LangChain and ElizaOS to work with DeFi platforms, including Aave and Uniswap. This makes creating a single interface and securely performing blockchain operations easier, removing the need to learn different protocol integrations.
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This allows for a utopia of financial automation, or “DeFAI,” where AI agents can control their financial destiny and manage and control their assets in a highly complex, dynamic environment.
For example, ElizaOS offers a robust multi-agent simulation environment to develop, deploy and manage many autonomous AI agents. It’s a versatile platform that enables these agents to move between various systems while preserving their identity and knowledge toward fully active and self-directed entities in the crypto realm.
AI agents can combine all the functions of TradFi and DeFi without issue. They can cut out the intermediaries in international transactions, improving the speed of handling crypto and fiat financial transactions. They can also enable liquidity providers to manage their stablecoin yields completely automatedly and maximize their yields according to current demand across all blockchains. These integrations are an indication of the endless possibilities in cross-border payment transactions.
In a September 2024 report, the Global Digital Visionaries Council predicted that by 2025, 20% of all financial transactions would be crosschain due to the integration of TradFi and DeFi systems.
Projects like Virtuals Protocol go further by enabling users to create, own and deploy autonomous AI agents. Although the initial application of Virtuals Protocol is the creation of AI-driven avatars, the protocol offers resources that can be used for autonomous crypto trading, showing the versatility of AI in blockchain ecosystems.
Autonomous market and personalization is also improving with the help of AI. Crypto’s first AI agents index, Cookie.fun — developed by Cookie DAO — provides real-time analysis of agents’ performance, mindshare and engagement across blockchains and social media. The platform lists their market caps and “smart following” to track market trends and provide vital information that investors and projects can use to make better decisions and identify the top-performing agents in the ecosystem.
AlphaNeural provides a decentralized environment for the training, market share and effectiveness of AI models and agents. It also has a marketplace for AI assets and a GPU aggregation network that enables creators to tokenize their work and secure and scale the execution of AI solutions. In this manner, the current opportunities for developing advanced AI tools are open for everyone, which connects AI developers with the crypto ecosystem.
The crypto analyst community is confident that AI technology can improve most blockchain performance metrics. The crypto ecosystem is also experiencing rapid user growth, which means that the level of personalization in customer interactions is also increasing due to the use of AI agents.
The skeptic’s point of view
Nevertheless, many still have different opinions regarding promoting digital autonomy in crypto through AI agents.
One significant concern raised in a case study published by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is the potential effect on the stock market from the increased risk of market manipulation. In theory, collusion between trading algorithms powered by AI could lead to price inefficiencies that might weaken the efficiency of financial markets. In such cases, the bots could manipulate prices up or down or cause a price surge or crash, eroding the market’s credibility.
Many people have also expressed concerns over relying on AI agents to make decisions because they are prone to hacking. Poorly programmed agents may be unable to resist certain types of cyberattacks, resulting in capital loss.
Without a drastic solution to such threats, risks, and legal and ethical issues, the skeptics will always have a valid argument against integrating AI agents in this area.
AI-driven autonomy
Cryptocurrencies and their supporters have been slow to warm up to AI agents, but they really should, given how useful they’ve been in so many areas. These integrations will likely improve trading, help onboarding from TradFi to DeFi, and offer other features. The utopia of completely autonomous AI control crypto experts describe is just around the corner.
The integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology unlocks the door to endless possibilities and may pave the path to a new digital era for humanity and its bots.
Opinion by: Tomer Warschauer Nuni, chief marketing officer of Kima Network.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
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