Need for On-Chain Trust Grows as AI Agents Flood Crypto

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) software systems are fast becoming the new power users of the internet.

These autonomous digital entities, capable of browsing, buying, trading, negotiating and even governing, are at the tip of payments and commerce innovation.

Amazon, for example, is testing a feature using agentic AI to help customers buy items from other brands while remaining within Amazon’s platform; while Paid, a startup, emerged from stealth last month to scale its financial infrastructure that helps the builders of AI agents get paid.

Yet for blockchain-native ecosystems, the rise of AI agents represents both a critical opportunity and a pivotal challenge. The opportunity is clear: intelligent agents can supercharge decentralized applications (dApps), DAOs, DeFi protocols and other on-chain ecosystems by automating complex interactions and executing tasks at scale.

The challenge, particularly for businesses? It is ensuring these agents can be trusted, and that their actions are traceable to real human intent when needed.

The crypto space has long championed the values of decentralization, permissionlessness and privacy. But in doing so, it’s often sacrificed usability and safety. Bots have gamed airdrops. Anonymous fraudsters have drained DeFi protocols. Coordinated misinformation campaigns have exploited DAOs.

PYMNTS covered Sunday (April 6) how cryptocurrency have thefts surged by 303% in the first quarter of 2025 alone.

As AI agents begin to flood the same ecosystems, these problems could multiply — unless a better trust layer is built.

Read more: Blockchain Interoperability Hits the Right Note for Crypto Payments

Trust Is Missing Layer Between AI and Blockchain

With AI agents taking on more responsibility, digital identity becomes more than a trust layer. It becomes the interface. In Web2, user identity is fragmented across platforms, controlled by centralized entities and vulnerable to exploitation. In Web3, identity is portable, composable and verifiable. AI agents will need to navigate this new terrain with clarity and consistency, whether they are interacting with humans, smart contracts or each other.

Just as websites have domain names and SSL certificates to signal trust, AI agents will need identity protocols to prove their legitimacy and intent. This could be especially critical in high-stakes domains like finance and payments, where trust is paramount and failure can be costly.

“Every crypto protocol needs to consider how this new technology will fit into their operations,” Harrison Seletsky, director at SPACE ID, told PYMNTS in an interview. “Verifiable on-chain identities will simplify AI-to-human and AI-to-AI interactions, making them safer by giving AI agents a humanly recognizable name, thereby cleaning out bots and bad actors from mispresenting themselves.”

Imagine a world where every AI agent has a unique, human-readable identity: something like trader.bot.eth or governance.vote.ai. These identities would be more than just names; they would carry on-chain credentials, transaction histories and behavioral reputations that are cryptographically verified.

In a financial context, this could be transformative. Once an AI agent has a track record, a known creator and a wallet that’s been through know your customer (KYC) or holds certain credentials, the calculus around trust and identity could change.

See also: Stablecoin Sandwiches? Here’s What CFOs Need to Know About Crypto Jargon

Integrating AI Into Blockchain Ecosystems

The potential for AI and blockchain payments to merge into a seamless, efficient and secure ecosystem is becoming increasingly undeniable to its proponents. However, it will require more than just technological breakthroughs. Collaboration between the AI and blockchain communities, as well as regulators and traditional financial institutions, will be crucial.

Chainalysis co-founder and CEO Jonathan Levin told Karen Webster in an interview posted Monday (April 7) that the integration of AI tools offers the potential for enhancing crypto literacy, compliance and the fight against illicit financial activity, particularly as crypto becomes further integrated into mainstream financial landscapes.

After all, PayPal announced Friday (April 4) that PayPal and Venmo users can now buy, hold, sell and transfer the cryptocurrencies Chainlink (LINK) and Solana (SOL) directly in their accounts; while Ripple on Wednesday (April 2) integrated its U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), into its cross-border payment solution, Ripple Payments.

The marketplace is responding with secure solutions that balance AI and blockchain. On Tuesday (April 8), the blockchain-focused AI cybersecurity startup Octane emerged from stealth and announced it secured $6.75 million in a seed funding round. Octane uses machine learning to continuously analyze blockchain codebases, identify vulnerabilities and remediate them before they can be exploited.