Sandy Kaul, head of digital assets and innovation at Franklin Templeton, said that AI agents will become a key scenario for the use of blockchain in the field of consumer payments. In her opinion, the traditional payment infrastructure is less suitable for such tasks due to high fees, delays in payments and the need for mandatory human participation. Blockchain technologies can play a crucial role in realizing the potential of agent-based artificial intelligence, as they provide low transaction costs, high throughput, and instant settlement of funds without the involvement of intermediary banks. Unlike simple chatbots, agent-based AI is able to independently initiate and perform complex sequences of actions, such as buying access to data or paying for computing resources.

Forecasts of analytical agencies confirm the significant potential of this area. According to Bain's assessment & By 2030, AI agents could account for 15 to 25 percent of all U.S. e-commerce sales. McKinsey & Company analysts believe that by the same date, agent-based commerce will coordinate global consumer transactions worth between $3 trillion and $5 trillion. When comparing network throughput, blockchain platforms demonstrate significant advantages: Aptos processes up to 12,933 transactions per second, Solana – up to 6,284, and BNB Chain – up to 3,252. Although the Visa network processes a comparable volume of transactions, the final settlement takes from one to three business days, while the blockchain records transactions almost instantly. The growth of such payments is expected to increase demand for the native assets of the respective networks, including SOL and ETH.

The necessary technological base for automated calculations is already being formed. As an example, experts cite the x402 payment protocol, developed by Coinbase for automatic payments over the HTTP protocol. This technology allows services to accept programmable payments from humans and AI agents without the need to create accounts or manually authorize. To support this standard, the Linux Foundation announced the creation of the x402 Foundation, which includes forty members, including AWS, Google, Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and the Solana Foundation. Additionally, Google has introduced the Open Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), which includes the A2A x402 extension for Web3 scenarios, indicating broad institutional support for the development of this infrastructure.

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The material has been prepared solely for informational purposes and does not constitute financial advice or recommendation.