Avalanche Expands AI Push as Kite Mainnet Goes Live

• Advertisement -

• Kite has launched its mainnet on Avalanche to offer a purpose-built Layer 1 for autonomous AI agents.

• On its testnet, Kite processed 1.9 billion agent interactions, peaking at 300 million daily transactions for over 20 million users.

As the role of AI agents in on-chain environments expands, more blockchain networks are unveiling new tools offering identity, permissions and transaction abilities. The latest is Avalanche, which has now launched Kite, a new Layer 1 network dedicated to autonomous AI agents and backed by PayPal and Coinbase.

Announcing the launch, Avalanche said that Kite will enable agents to transact and interact autonomously on-chain, using its Kite Passport for payments and identity.

Kite AI mainnet + Kite Passport are live.

A dedicated L1, @GoKiteAI lets autonomous AI agents transact, buy, and interact on their own, with Kite Passport for identity and payments.

Here’s why it’s built on Avalanche 👇 pic.twitter.com/k67jY8QXva

— Avalanche🔺 (@avax) April 28, 2026

Kite launched its testnet early last year to track and reward AI agents’ contributions and coordinate data exchange between dozens of models. At the time, agents were passive components designed for simple tasks. However, they have since evolved into active systems that can make decisions on their own, call APIs and execute payments. This has accelerated the need for instant, programmable payment networks that do not require humans to sign off.

Kite has tracked this evolution and has expanded into an execution and settlement layer for these agents. In the past year, it has processed over 1.9 billion interactions between agents, peaking at 300 million daily transactions and over 30 million API calls. In that time, it has attracted over 20 million users with 51 million active addresses.

This rapid growth has attracted some of the sector’s leading investors, who have invested $33 million in the project. The funding was led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, an early investor in Circle and Stripe. Coinbase Ventures, Samsung Next and the Avalanche Foundation also participated. In addition to the funding, PayPal is among the early users of Kite’s infrastructure, while Shopify is also integrating Kite’s agent-driven payments into its e-commerce platform.

Avalanche Doubles Down on AI

While the testnet was a massive success, the mainnet launch enables continuous and programmatic transactions between agents, services and online marketplaces. It also introduces Kite Passport, offering verifiable identity for AI agents.

On the mainnet, agents can now “authenticate, operate within constraints, and transact in real time, whether paying per API call, accessing data, or completing tasks that require settlement along the way,” Avalanche says.

Avalanche joins dozens of crypto projects launching new products targeting AI agents. A week ago, Coinbase launched Agentic.market, a new marketplace for services built on its x402 AI payments protocol, as ETHNEWS reported. MoonPay had earlier released an open-source wallet standard for agents.

But while agentic commerce is taking center stage, Avalanche continues to explore multiple streams to offer its users a complete on-chain economy. In a recent blog, the network discussed how it’s tapping tokenized real-world assets to create new revenue streams, especially in emerging markets. While lower fees, faster transactions and smoother user interface are still crucial, Avalanche says that embedded financial products are the ultimate target.

Avalanche now enables platforms to embed yield, tokenized equities and payments, rather than building them from scratch. Commenting on the new features, David Sutter, whose OpenTrade platform offers yield-as-a-service on Avalanche, stated:

“Avalanche, as the underlying technology, is what is enabling us to move that fast, that efficiently, and that smartly.”