Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
The narrative of AI development is rapidly shifting from "tool-based intelligence" to "autonomous intelligence." Two years ago, we were marveling at the fluent responses of LLMs like ChatGPT; today, agents represented by "Lobster" OpenClaw can already independently perform relatively complex real-world tasks to some extent.
The outline of the future world is becoming increasingly clear — AI's role in economic activities will gradually change from "human assistant" to "autonomous participant." In the near future, humans will become accustomed to the following scenarios: assistant-type Agents can help you complete daily chores like booking flights and ordering meals; research-type Agents can actively seek opportunities in financial markets; commercial Agents can automatically compare quotes from global vendors and complete orders... and their counterparts will also be other Agents.
But as AI Agents gradually gain economic behavioral capabilities, a new question arises — how should the economic order between AI Agents be established?
"AI can already perform tasks, but it lacks payment capabilities, identity systems, and credit systems. Without these infrastructures, AI's autonomous economy can hardly operate truly."
The above statement comes from FinAI, an AI startup that Odaily Planet Daily recently encountered. The company's core team mainly comes from top-tier internet companies and is currently actively embracing Web3 technology stacks like x402 and ERC-8004, attempting to address the aforementioned "order" issue based on three dimensions: payment, identity, and reputation.
Rechard, founder of FinAI, revealed that FinAI is currently in the seed funding stage and has already received investment commitments from some leading blockchain industry players.
Pioneering Order in the Agent Economy Era
To put it in one sentence, what FinAI wants to do is — build a set of financial infrastructure for AI Agents, providing the underlying order for the future Agent-to-Agent economy.
In FinAI's vision, the AI Agent economy requires three core foundational capabilities: payment capability, identity system, and credit system.
- First is payment capability. Currently, the vast majority of AI Agents do not have independent payment capabilities; they can only perform tasks but cannot complete actual transactions. For example, an AI agent can help users search for flights, but the final payment still requires manual completion. FinAI hopes to achieve microsecond-level payment settlements between Agents based on the x402 protocol, enabling service calls between Agents to form a complete economic closed loop.
- Second is the identity system. While introducing the ERC-8004 protocol, FinAI proposed the KYA (Know Your Agent) concept, analogous to KYC, i.e., establishing a verifiable identity system for AI Agents. Unlike KYC in traditional finance, KYA focuses on Agent identity verification and behavioral boundaries, enabling AI Agents to have compliant and secure identity attributes when performing tasks.
- Third is the credit system. FinAI believes that large-scale transactions between Agents in the future will inevitably rely on a reputation system. An Agent's historical transactions, task execution quality, refund records, and other information can all become important bases for credit assessment. This credit system will become the trust foundation for future AI economic activities.
Rechard added that FinAI hopes to package and integrate the above three foundational capabilities and open them up in the form of API/Skill for Agents to freely call, so that every Agent can easily obtain payment, identity, and credit capabilities, promoting the gradual formation of an Agent trading market.
Regarding target customers and revenue models, Rechard revealed that FinAI mainly targets two groups. One is Agent application developers in the Web2 world; such B-end users need to obtain FinAI's services through API subscriptions, which will also be FinAI's main source of income. The other is on-chain users in the Web3 ecosystem; FinAI is exploring the design of various financial application scenarios with mainstream public chains, providing services to Web3 users through Agent Skill access. FinAI may consider charging a certain proportion of transaction shares in task transactions between Agents in the future, but Rechard revealed that FinAI aims to incubate a mature Agent trading market and is happy to see Agents making money independently. It does not intend to profit from the C-end, so the transaction commission rate is expected to be very low and friendly.
In 2026, FinAI completed its first autonomous payment order and is expected to achieve formal service revenue within the first quarter. Rechard stated regarding this: "What FinAI is doing is not exactly a money-burning business, so it is expected to achieve positive profitability within the year."
Embracing Web3 is an Inevitable Trend
FinAI has actively embraced protocols and standards born in the Web3 world, such as x402 and ERC-8004, in its technology stack, and has planned to integrate the latest ERC-8138 protocol launched by the Ethereum Foundation as a supplement into its services. In Rechard's view, this is not merely a technical choice but a result driven by practical needs.
Readers familiar with "Lobster" may have noticed some security controversies it recently caused, such as accidentally deleting data or sending emails by mistake. Assuming AI Agents could immediately access your financial accounts, the risks would only be harder to control — which is why many companies are currently unwilling to directly open credit card or bank accounts to Agents.
Rechard stated on this matter that Agents need a new payment and identity system, not directly inheriting human financial accounts. The on-chain stablecoin payment and settlement system is currently the best option on the market.
Cost and efficiency advantages are the core elements. In the traditional cross-border payment system, fund settlement usually takes T+3 to T+5 days, with high costs and complex processes, making this path completely incompatible with the Agent economy, which has huge micro-payment demands. In contrast, the payment and settlement system based on stablecoins can complete transactions within seconds and significantly reduce costs. FinAI revealed that its system can currently achieve real-time payments in the range of $0.01 to $1000, completing settlement within 2 to 3 seconds, with on-chain settlement costs being about 1/300 of traditional systems.
Rechard pointed out that the proportion of stablecoins in global payments is continuously rising. Once funds move from the traditional banking system into the stablecoin system, they often do not flow back. This trend is forcing traditional institutions to actively embrace on-chain finance.
However, Rechard also mentioned that traditional market customers still have concerns about compliance and security when接触 (contacting) on-chain financial systems, but this is precisely FinAI's current advantage. On the one hand, FinAI possesses full-stack technology and engineering capabilities and related patents for identity gateways, payment systems, quantum encryption wallets, etc., and can build a digital banking-level security environment for economic activities between Agents; on the other hand, with the identity and credit system based on KYA, FinAI can further ensure the compliance and security of Agent economic activities in the design of the transaction architecture.
First-Mover Advantage Means Everything
FinAI was first conceived in August 2025. Although the development time is not long, the progress has been remarkably efficient. In November 2025, FinAI was initially launched; on January 13, 2026, it completed access to the Base chain; on February 5, it completed the Agent's MCP; on March 6, it completed the PoC for DID and reputation system......
Rechard mentioned that at this early stage of Agent economic activities, the biggest competitive advantage lies in who can first successfully run a complete system. There are indeed some point solutions in the market today, such as projects focusing on payment, identity, or reputation scoring, but there are still few infrastructures that truly integrate all three.
Once the Agent economy begins to accelerate and explode in the future, when AI Agents need payment capabilities, identity authentication, or credit systems, if FinAI is the earliest platform to complete a full closed loop, then Agents will prioritize calling its services.
Rechard also mentioned a secret to this — to provide services that are more friendly to Agents. Specifically, the entity selecting services in the future will be the Agent, and the Agent's behavioral logic is different from that of humans; they will automatically seek the most cost-effective and easiest-to-integrate services. Therefore, FinAI particularly emphasizes "Agent-friendly" in its system design. Its code interfaces and API structures are optimized for Agents, making it easier for Agents to access and call.
From historical experience, every evolution of market paradigms requires new infrastructure and order. The e-commerce era gave birth to third-party payments, the mobile internet gave birth to digital wallets, and the rise of AI Agents may give birth to a new economic system. FinAI's goal is to act as a pioneer to try and lead the order construction under the new system.
