Written by: imToken
2026 is becoming a crucial turning point for the deep convergence of Crypto and AI.
Over the past two years, we have witnessed AI's transformation from an "auxiliary tool" to an "autonomous economic participant." AI agents are no longer just chatbots answering questions; they are beginning to autonomously initiate transactions, call APIs, manage asset portfolios, and even hire other agents to complete tasks.
But all of this is predicated on these agents needing identity, payment channels, reputation records, and a verifiable execution environment.
And these are precisely the problems that blockchain excels at solving.
These are precisely the problems that blockchain excels at solving.
Finally, besides identity and payment, the third piece of the puzzle that Ethereum recently added is the execution layer.
In April 2026, Biconomy and the Ethereum Foundation's Improve UX direction jointly promoted ERC-8211, attempting to solve the most realistic bottleneck of AI Agents in the DeFi world. For example, complex on-chain operations are often not a single call, but a multi-step, dynamic, and easily failable execution chain.
We can essentially understand it as a "smart batch processing" mechanism specifically designed for AI agents and complex DeFi operations. In traditional on-chain operations, completing a complex DeFi strategy often requires multiple independent transactions: withdrawing funds from a lending protocol, exchanging tokens, and then depositing them into another protocol. Each step requires separate signature and confirmation, which is cumbersome for human users and a bottleneck for AI agents requiring high-frequency autonomous operations. The ERC-8211 solution allows multiple blockchain operations to be combined and executed in a single transaction. Each step dynamically parses the actual value during execution and must meet predefined conditions before proceeding to the next step. For example, an agent can complete the following in a single signed transaction: withdrawing funds from Aave → exchanging the received amount on Uniswap → depositing the exchange result into Compound—all executed atomically without the need to write new smart contracts. Looking at these three together, Ethereum's recent trajectory is quite clear: ERC-8004 answers "Who are you and why should others trust you?", x402 answers "How do you pay for services?", and ERC-8211 answers "How do you efficiently complete complex operations?". In other words, what the AI Agent economy truly lacks is not just a smarter, larger model, but an open, composable, and scalable protocol stack; and this is precisely what Ethereum excels at. III. Beyond Ethereum: Solana, DePIN, and Decentralized Computing Of course, even though Ethereum holds a leading position in standards setting and trust infrastructure, the AI crypto ecosystem is far more than just one chain. A more accurate statement is that Ethereum is vying for dominance in the standards and trust layers, while other ecosystems are demonstrating different advantages in the execution and computing power layers. Solana is the most typical example. Its growing presence in the agent payment discussion stems from the fact that AI agents' requirements for the blockchain are not based on ideological correctness, but rather on "low latency, low cost, and sufficient stability." Solana's official description of the x402 directly highlights its millisecond-level finality and extremely low transaction costs as key selling points for machine payments. This explains why Solana is better suited for high-frequency, small-amount agent interaction scenarios requiring immediate feedback. Meanwhile, the Agent toolchain surrounding Solana is also maturing rapidly. The official Solana Agent Kit GitHub allows Agents on any model to autonomously execute over 60 Solana actions, covering multiple scenarios such as transactions, token issuance, lending, airdrops, Blink, and cross-chain operations, and is being reused by numerous on-chain projects and developers. Therefore, from today's perspective, the division of labor in crypto AI is becoming clearer. Ethereum is more like providing the underlying abstraction for protocol standards, identity reputation, and trusted execution, while Solana holds a real advantage in high-frequency payments and low-friction interactions. The value of decentralized computing networks will also be repriced as more Agents enter production environments. Overall, looking back from April 2026, the landscape of encrypted AI protocols has begun to take shape: Identity Layer: ERC-8004, as the Ethereum-led Agent identity standard, has expanded to multiple chains such as Base; Payment Layer: x402 has grown from an experimental project at Coinbase to a global standard governed by the Linux Foundation; Execution Layer: Standards such as ERC-8211 simplify complex on-chain operations for Agents; Verification Layer: Technologies such as zkML, TEE, and cryptographic proofs are beginning to provide verifiability for high-value Agent interactions; Competitive Landscape: Ethereum serves as the standards and trust layer, Solana as the high-frequency execution layer, and Bittensor may also supplement it in terms of computing power and other dimensions, forming a complementary rather than zero-sum pattern; Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Ethereum's new upgrade will most likely drive L1 scaling, native account abstraction, and post-quantum security. The widespread adoption of account abstraction will undoubtedly significantly lower the barrier to entry for Agent wallets; the deep integration of x402 and ERC-8004 may also give rise to a closed-loop Agent economy, encompassing Agent identity registration, service discovery, payment initiation, and reputation accumulation, all completed on-chain. In conclusion, Ethereum and blockchain are not meant to accelerate the arrival of AI, but rather to ensure that when AI arrives, the world does not spiral out of control. In the Web2 world, AI's identity is defined by API keys from large companies, payments are handled by credit card systems, and trust is backed by centralized platforms. This system barely functions in scenarios with human users, but it's increasingly inadequate in the new paradigm where millions of AI agents need to collaborate autonomously 24/7. Ethereum, as a standard setter, Solana, representing a high-efficiency execution layer, and DePIN, supporting decentralized computing power, may build a completely new infrastructure for the AI Agent economy.
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