AI Agent-Driven Payment Infrastructure: The Encryption Industry Approaches a New Wave of Innovation

Introduction

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

Recently, Tether announced the integration of USDT into the BTC ecosystem, covering its base layer and the Lightning Network. Behind these trends, a transformation is brewing: AI Agent-driven payment infrastructure is pushing the cryptocurrency industry into a new wave of innovation. From the consensus layer of BTC to the execution layer of smart contracts, and now to the current AI-driven application layer, the cryptocurrency industry is likely to welcome a paradigm innovation of AI + Pay Fi + BTC Infra, promoting the self-reform of Web2 into 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 increasingly clear regulatory framework of stablecoins are expected to make them the standard settlement currency for global payments. With the advancement of cryptocurrency-friendly policies, the application scenarios for stablecoins will gradually expand. In the next 10 years, stablecoin payments may present the following development vision:

Short-term (1-3 years): Stablecoins will dominate cross-border remittances, providing a faster and cheaper alternative than traditional systems. Cryptocurrency-related payment cards will simplify consumption, building a bridge between on-chain wealth and real-world transactions.

Medium-term (3-7 years): Businesses will increasingly adopt stablecoin payments due to low fees, instant settlement, and programmability. Companies will be able to seamlessly convert between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, offering a dual-track payment option.

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

Stablecoins also provide entrepreneurs with a more accessible platform to develop new payment products, without the need for intermediaries, minimum balances, or proprietary SDKs. It is estimated that medium to large enterprises could see a 2% increase in profits by using stablecoin solutions in transactions. Additionally, some countries have experimented with using stablecoins for international trade to bypass traditional settlement systems. An increasing number of cases indicate that stablecoins are gradually approaching their optimal market fit. They are undoubtedly the most cost-effective way to settle in USD and also the fastest global payment method.

2. Next Level: AI Agents Become a New Layer of User Experience for Future Apps

Today, we no longer rely solely on AI to perform single tasks. We are entering an “era where AI Agents become independent market participants.” This shift involves AI-driven financial trading, smart supply chain management, and generative AI providing services to content creators, developers, and businesses. Furthermore, AI agents can autonomously negotiate, trade, settle, and optimize their resource utilization.

At the end of last year, AI Agents began to redefine the application scenarios of DApps. Some AI Agents are able to autonomously use tokens for trading, generate content, and even manage their own encryption wallets and assets. This evolution of capabilities has spawned new narratives in the encryption field, such as Virtual Protocol—a protocol similar to Pump.fun, but its “Pump” objects are various AI Agents.

The evolving capabilities of AI Agents, combined with a ready-to-use issuance platform, have opened up significant market opportunities for the concept of AI Agent + Crypto. AI is becoming an active participant in the on-chain ecosystem, driving the transition of blockchain applications from being tool-oriented to being ecosystem-oriented.

In the future, AI will become the user experience layer of blockchain technology, connecting the application layer and blockchain infrastructure. For example, AI may proactively recommend and execute on-chain DeFi operations based on users’ intentions and preferences, combined with real-time information from predictive markets. Users can enjoy optimized services without needing to understand the technical details. In daily life, AI personal finance assistants may autonomously manage tax, insurance, and rental income and expenses, dynamically optimize investment portfolios, and even automatically execute trades based on market changes.

To ensure security, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) has become a key infrastructure that guarantees the behavior of AI Agents fully adheres to preset logic through isolated computing environments and is not subject to external manipulation. AI Agents running in TEE can attract users and generate revenue by creating content, while also ensuring absolute control over their asset keys through encryption technology. AI can also operate Depin nodes or verify data, becoming the core executor of distributed systems.

The workflows and application scenarios of these AI Agents are sketching out a whole new picture of the “machine economy”: from game players to Depin managers, from content creators to financial strategists, AI Agents will become the core driving force of the on-chain ecosystem.

3. The Predicament of Existing Payment Systems: 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 economic 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 using blockchain technology, providing AI Agents with seamless economic interaction capabilities.

3.1 Economic Imbalance in Micro Payments

Imagine an AI agent running high-frequency trading strategies, needing to complete 1,000 trades per second, with each trade amounting to only $0.0001. Using traditional payment networks, each transaction incurs at least $0.30 in fees, which means that for each $0.0001 trade, you would have to pay fees that are 3,000 times higher. This cost structure makes it impossible for the AI economy to operate on existing payment systems.

3.2 Fatal Flaw in Settlement Speed

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

• Credit card payment: Usually takes 1-3 days to settle.
• International transfer: May take 2-5 days.
• Cryptocurrency payment (such as Bitcoin main chain transactions): takes an average of 10 minutes or longer.

The AI economy requires millisecond-level settlement, but the existing payment system cannot meet this demand.

3.3 Limitations of Centralized Architecture

AI agents are essentially global and not restricted by geographical boundaries. However, traditional payment systems are deeply entangled in issues such as bank accounts, fiat currency compliance, and regional payment regulations.

• Dependence on bank accounts: Most payment systems require parties to have bank accounts, and AI agents cannot open bank 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 face cumbersome compliance requirements, increasing operational costs and complexity.

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

3.4 Five Core Requirements of the AI Economic Payment System

Considering the possible operational characteristics and use cases of AI Agents, the future payment system for AI services must possess the following five core capabilities:

• Micro-payment capability: supports transactions of very small amounts (such as at the level of $0.0001), with extremely low transaction fees that approach zero.
• Millisecond-level transaction settlement: supports real-time settlement within sub-second time scales.
• Decentralization and censorship resistance: Supports AI agents for autonomous trading, without relying on centralized financial institutions.
• Global Availability: Supports cross-border transactions, avoiding reliance on bank accounts.
• Intelligent Payment Protocol: Seamless interaction with AI agents, supporting automatic settlement, intelligent trading routing, liquidity optimization, and other functions.

4. The Hopes and Limitations of Blockchain Payments

The rise of blockchain technology brings hope to the AI economy. However, mainstream blockchain still faces the following problems:

high cost of 4.1 ETH network payment

ETH is the primary infrastructure for DeFi, but high transaction costs make it difficult for the AI economy to adopt. During network congestion, a simple USDT transaction may require Gas fees of $10 to $50, with limited transaction throughput and slow processing speeds, making it challenging 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 offer faster transaction processing capabilities, but they often have a higher degree of centralization, which poses security risks. Some high-performance public chains have experienced multiple outages, impacting transaction stability. Most public chains rely on a small number of validating nodes, which may affect the decentralized nature of the payment system.

scalability bottleneck of the 4.3 BTC mainnet

BTC, as the world’s most secure and decentralized blockchain, has unmatched security, but its payment capability is limited. The BTC mainnet has an extremely low transaction throughput (only 7 transactions per second), and when faced with higher transaction volume requests, gas fees soar, resulting in significant fluctuations in transaction costs, making it unsuitable for small payments by AI agents.

4.4 Lightning Network: A New Stage for Stablecoin Payments

The Lightning Network, as the first layer-two scaling solution for BTC, relies on the security of the BTC network to achieve instant, low-cost, and infinitely scalable transaction capabilities through bi-directional payment channels. This technological approach is highly suited for small, high-frequency payment scenarios, while also aligning with the ideals of fundamentalist encryption enthusiasts. Currently, the Lightning Network has over 15,000 nodes and 50,000 channels, showcasing strong ecological potential.

However, the Lightning Network is not without its flaws. Before the emergence of the Taproot Assets protocol, the Lightning Network only supported BTC as a payment currency, which limited its application scenarios. Most people are unwilling to easily spend their held BTC. At this point, the importance of stablecoins is self-evident: only currencies with stable value can be widely accepted and used in daily payment scenarios.

USDT is currently the dominant stablecoin in the encryption world. As of now, the total issuance of USDT exceeds 140 billion USD, more than double that of USDC. Tether’s integration of USDT into the Lightning Network is significant, marking a recognition of the public chain’s security and usability. The real on-chain users and transaction fee income brought by USDT are the resources that every public chain dreams of. This also indicates that after years of development, the Lightning Network has finally welcomed a real opportunity to showcase its capabilities.

5. Everything is ready, just waiting for the right moment.

The explosive growth of AI Agents is giving rise to a trillion-level market for the machine economy, but traditional payment networks and existing blockchain solutions struggle to meet its demands. The integration of USDT into the Lightning Network provides a key piece for the industry—a nearly zero-cost, censorship-resistant payment channel, combined with the liquidity of stablecoins, perfectly suited for the micropayments and real-time transaction scenarios of AI agents.

AISA was born in response to the situation. It is not just a simple stacking of technology stacks; it is a “financial operating system” tailored for the AI economy, allowing the AI economy to truly break free from the shackles of payment and move towards a future of autonomous interaction. In the future AI economy, there is no need to wait—payment is efficiency, and trading is intelligence.

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

6.1 The four-layer technical architecture of AISA

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

a. Settlement Layer

• Underlying Network: BTC Network (L1) + Lightning Network (L2)
• Core advantages:
  • Security: Based on Bitcoin’s PoW mechanism and decentralized network
  • Efficiency: Millisecond-level transaction confirmation, with fees approaching zero

b. Payment Layer

• Multi-chain support: Compatible with public chains like Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, etc.
• Stablecoin Integration: AISA’s own issued aiUSD circulates on the Lightning Network with USDT and USDC through the Taproot Assets protocol.

c. Programmable Layer (智能支付层)

• AI Native Protocol (AIP): 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, no manual intervention.
• Liquidity Management: AI agents can dynamically allocate funds to liquidity pools to optimize payment efficiency.

d. Governance Layer

• DAO mechanism: Governed collectively by LPT token holders, deciding on protocol upgrades, fee distribution, etc.
• Incentive Mechanism: Liquidity Provision