AI Agent-Driven Payment Infrastructure: A New Era of the Machine Economy

Introduction

For the past century, the basic unit of economic activity has been humanity. However, the rise of AI technology is reshaping this landscape, transforming machines from passive tools into "active economic agents" — AI Agents.

Recently, a stablecoin issuer announced the integration of its stablecoin into the Bitcoin ecosystem, covering the base layer and the Lightning Network. Behind this trend, a transformation is brewing: AI Agent-driven payment infrastructure is driving the cryptocurrency industry into a new wave of innovation in a groundbreaking way. From the consensus layer of Bitcoin to the execution layer of smart contracts, and now to the AI-driven application layer, the cryptocurrency industry is likely to welcome a paradigm shift in AI, payment finance, and Bitcoin infrastructure, facilitating the transition from Web2 to Web3—the future of mass adoption is gradually becoming a reality.

1. Stablecoins: The Cornerstone of a New Era in Global Payments

The programmability, cross-border practicality, and gradually clarified regulatory framework of stablecoins are expected to make them the standard settlement currency for global payments. As a policy environment that is friendly to cryptocurrencies takes shape, the application scenarios for stablecoins will gradually expand. We can look forward to the development blueprint for stablecoin payments in the next 10 years:

Short-term (1-3 years): Stablecoins will dominate cross-border remittances, providing a faster and cheaper alternative to traditional systems. Payment cards related to cryptocurrencies will simplify consumption, bridging on-chain wealth and real-world transactions.

Medium term (3-7 years): Enterprises will increasingly adopt stablecoin payments due to the low fees, instant settlement, and programmability of stablecoins. Companies will be able to seamlessly convert between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, providing customers with dual-track payment options.

Long-term (7 years and above): Stablecoins will become mainstream legal tender, widely accepted for payments and even tax payments, fundamentally disrupting traditional financial infrastructure.

In addition to payment convenience, stablecoins also have a positive impact in other areas: they provide entrepreneurs with easier access to platform development for new payment products, without intermediaries, minimum balances, or proprietary SDKs. It is estimated that medium to large enterprises using stablecoin solutions can increase profits by 2%. Moreover, some countries have attempted to use stablecoins for international trade. An increasing number of cases suggest that stablecoins are gradually approaching their optimal market positioning – they are undoubtedly the most economical way to settle in USD and also the fastest means of global payment.

2. Next Stage: AI Agent will become a new user experience layer for applications.

Today, AI is no longer limited to performing single tasks, such as image recognition or speech synthesis. We are entering an "era where AI agents become independent market participants." This change involves AI-driven financial trading, intelligent supply chain management, and generative AI providing services for content creators, developers, and businesses. Furthermore, AI agents can even autonomously negotiate, trade, settle, and optimize their own resource utilization.

At the end of last year, we saw AI Agents redefine the landscape of decentralized applications. The pioneers of this trend are able to autonomously promote the tokens they issue. Subsequently, AI Agents have been able to autonomously use tokens for trading, generate content, and even manage their own crypto wallets and assets. This evolution of capabilities has given rise to new narratives in the crypto space, such as certain protocols allowing AI Agents to become trading entities.

The evolving capabilities of AI Agents, combined with convenient issuance platforms, have opened up tremendous market opportunities for the integration of AI Agents and cryptocurrencies. AI is becoming an active participant in the on-chain ecosystem, driving the shift of blockchain applications from being tool-oriented to ecosystem-oriented.

In the future, AI will become the user experience layer of blockchain technology, connecting the application layer and the blockchain infrastructure. For example, AI can actively recommend and execute on-chain decentralized finance operations based on user intentions and preferences, combined with real-time market information. Users do not need to understand the underlying technical details. In daily life, an AI personal finance assistant may autonomously manage taxes, insurance, and rental income and expenses, dynamically optimize investment portfolios, and even automatically execute trades based on market changes.

To ensure security, Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) have become a key infrastructure that isolates the computing environment to ensure that AI Agent behaviors fully adhere to preset logic without external manipulation. AI Agents running in TEE can generate income while ensuring absolute control over asset keys. Additionally, AI can operate decentralized physical infrastructure nodes or validate data, becoming the core executor of distributed systems.

The workflows and application scenarios of these AI Agents are sketching a brand new "machine economy" landscape: from gamers to decentralized physical infrastructure managers, from content creators to financial strategists, AI Agents will become the core driving force of the on-chain ecosystem.

3. The Dilemma of the Existing Payment System: The Invisible Shackles of the AI Economy

In the future, AI Agents will partially replace humans and become independent participants in the market. However, this machine economy revolution faces challenges, one of the core issues being "payment." The realization of the AI revolution requires an efficient, secure, and decentralized payment network built on blockchain technology, providing AI Agents with seamless economic interaction capabilities.

3.1 Economic Imbalance of Micropayments

Imagine an AI agent executing high-frequency trading strategies, needing to complete 1,000 transactions per second, each for just $0.0001. Using traditional payment networks, each transaction incurs at least a $0.30 fee, which means a fee 3,000 times greater than the transaction amount of $0.0001. This cost structure makes it impossible for the AI economy to operate on existing payment systems.

3.2 The Fatal Flaw of Settlement Speed

For AI agents, trading is an ongoing flow process. However, the settlement methods of traditional payment networks are extremely lagging behind:

• Credit card payment: Usually takes 1-3 days to complete settlement.
• International transfer: It may take 2-5 days.
• Cryptocurrency payments (such as Bitcoin main chain transactions): typically take 10 minutes or longer.

AI economy requires millisecond-level settlement, and the existing payment systems clearly cannot meet this.

3.3 Limitations of Centralized Architecture

AI agents are essentially global and not limited by geographic boundaries. However, traditional payment systems are mired in issues such as bank accounts, fiat currency compliance, and regional payment regulations.

• Bank account dependency: Most payment systems require parties to have a bank account, whereas AI agents cannot open accounts like humans.
• Centralized control: Existing payment systems rely on a few financial institutions for approval, and AI agent transactions may be rejected due to regulatory or compliance issues.
• International payment barriers: AI agents in cross-border transactions will encounter cumbersome compliance requirements, increasing operational costs and complexity.

If the AI economy must rely on the existing payment system, it will be constrained by artificially imposed limitations and will not be able to truly unleash its potential.

Five Core Requirements of the 3.4 AI Economic Payment System

The payment system serving AI in the future must have the following five core capabilities:

1. Micro payment capability: Supports transactions of very small amounts, with transaction fees very low or close to zero.
2. Millisecond-level transaction settlement: supports real-time settlement instead of waiting for minutes or days.
3. Decentralization and Anti-Censorship: AI agents need to trade autonomously, without relying on centralized financial institutions.
4. Global availability: Supports cross-border transactions, avoiding reliance on bank accounts.
5. Smart Payment Protocol: Seamless interaction with AI agents, supporting functions such as automatic settlement, smart trading routing, and liquidity optimization.

4. The Hope and Limitations of Blockchain Payments

Blockchain technology brings hope to the AI economy, but mainstream blockchains still face challenges:

4.1 High costs of payments on the Ethereum network

Ethereum is the main infrastructure for decentralized finance, but high transaction costs make it difficult for the AI economy to adopt. During network congestion, simple transactions may require Gas fees of $10-50, with limited transaction throughput and slow processing speeds, making it difficult to support the high-frequency trading needs of AI agents.

4.2 The speed and centralization issues of other high-performance public chains

High-performance public chains provide faster transaction processing capabilities but have a higher degree of centralization, which poses security risks. Some public chains have experienced multiple outages, affecting transaction stability. Most public chains rely on a few validation nodes, which may impact the decentralized nature of the payment system.

4.3 Scalability Bottlenecks of the Bitcoin Mainnet

Bitcoin, as the world's most secure and decentralized blockchain, has unmatched security, but its payment capability is limited. The mainnet transaction throughput is very low (only 7 transactions per second), and during high transaction volumes, Gas fees soar, leading to significant fluctuations in transaction costs, making it unsuitable for small payments via AI agents.

4.4 Lightning Network: A New Stage for Stablecoin Payments

The Lightning Network, as a second-layer scaling solution for Bitcoin, relies on the security of the Bitcoin network to achieve instantaneous, low-cost, and infinitely scalable transaction capabilities through bidirectional payment channels. This technological path is highly suitable for small, high-frequency payment scenarios and aligns with the ideals of fundamentalist crypto enthusiasts. Currently, the Lightning Network has over 15,000 nodes and more than 50,000 channels, demonstrating strong ecological potential.

However, the Lightning Network is not perfect. Before the emergence of the Taproot Assets protocol, it only supported Bitcoin as a payment currency, limiting its application scenarios. Most people are reluctant to easily spend the Bitcoin they hold. At this time, the importance of stablecoins becomes evident: only currencies with stable value can be widely accepted and used for everyday payments.

A certain stablecoin issuer integrating its stablecoin into the Lightning Network is significant. This action marks a recognition of the security and usability of public chains. More importantly, the real on-chain users and fee income brought by stablecoins are resources that every public chain dreams of. This also indicates that after years of development, the era in which the Lightning Network truly plays a role has arrived.

5. Everything is ready, just waiting for the favorable wind to come.

The explosive growth of AI agents is giving rise to a trillion-dollar machine economy landscape, but traditional payment networks and existing blockchain solutions struggle to meet its demands. The integration of stablecoins into the Lightning Network seems to provide a key piece of the puzzle for the industry—an almost zero-cost, censorship-resistant payment channel, combined with the liquidity of stablecoins, perfectly fitting the micro-payment and real-time transaction scenarios of AI agents.

Thus, AISA was born. It is not just a simple stacking of technology stacks, but a "financial operating system" tailored for the AI economy, allowing the AI economy to truly break free from payment restrictions and move towards a future of autonomous interaction. The future AI economy does not need to wait - payment is efficiency, and transactions are intelligence.

6. AISA: The Ultimate Fusion of Lightning Network, Stablecoins, and AI Agents

6.1 AISA's four-layer technical architecture

The architecture of AISA is divided into four core levels that work together, allowing AI agents to conduct payments freely and efficiently.

a. Settlement Layer

• Underlying Network: Bitcoin Network (L1) + Lightning Network (L2)
• Core Advantages:
  • Security: Based on Bitcoin's proof-of-work mechanism and decentralized network
  • Efficiency: Millisecond-level transaction confirmation, fees close to zero

b. Payment Layer

• Multi-chain support: Compatible with public chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, etc.
• Stablecoin integration: AISA's own issued native stablecoin circulates on the Lightning Network through the Taproot Assets protocol alongside other mainstream stablecoins.

c. Programmable Layer

• AI Native Protocol: Empowering AI Agents with Autonomous Decision-Making Capabilities
• Dynamic Routing: Real-time analysis of transaction fees and network congestion, automatically switching payment paths.
• Automated micropayments: on-demand settlement without the need for human intervention
• Liquidity Management: AI agents can dynamically allocate funds to liquidity pools to optimize payment efficiency.

d. Governance Layer

• DAO mechanism: jointly governed by token holders, deciding on protocol upgrades, fee distribution, etc.
• Incentive mechanism: Liquidity providers stake tokens to earn rewards, and a portion of the transaction fees is used for token burning.

6.2 How does AISA redefine AI economic payments?

AISA is designed specifically for the AI economy, integrating the decentralized efficiency of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, the liquidity assurance of stablecoins, and the intelligent decision-making capabilities of AI native protocols, to build near-zero.