12 Potential Startup Directions in AI and Blockchain

By: Wyatt Lonergan, 0xlaguna

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

The dominant economic actors of the future will no longer be traditional companies—but software systems capable of operating autonomously around the clock, continuously creating value and compounding growth. These systems require minimal human intervention and are not only more durable than their creators but also more efficient. We call such systems “Money Machines.”

We are witnessing the largest infrastructure upgrade in internet history—a convergence driven by two major technological trends: blockchain and artificial intelligence.

The internet made information programmable; blockchain made value programmable; and now AI is making decision-making programmable.

Every industrial revolution has unlocked a new mode of production—the assembly line scaled manufacturing, the printing press scaled knowledge, and email scaled communication. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and autonomous agents are unlocking the next dimension: they will form the foundational infrastructure of a new internet-based financial system—in which autonomous capital will amplify human potential at an unprecedented scale.

The dominant economic actors of the future will no longer be traditional companies—but software systems capable of operating autonomously around the clock, continuously creating value and compounding growth. These systems require minimal human intervention and are not only more durable than their creators but also more efficient.

We call such systems “Money Machines.”

Observing how people use @openclaw daily makes it clear we’re in the midst of a new industrial revolution. Today, any individual or business can build goal-oriented autonomous agents and run them on everyday devices.

This means any great idea—no matter how ambitious—can now be implemented programmatically. As we see early agent-native companies begin generating revenue online, the scale of possibility is unprecedented—and it’s unfolding in real time.

Why? Until recently, economic activity always required human involvement: a transaction needed both buyer and seller present—or at least reachable by phone. Capital sat idle overnight; markets and banks closed on weekends. Expertise was locked inside individuals whose working hours were finite. Companies emerged precisely to solve these problems—extending capital beyond the lifespan of its owners and beyond individual capability limits. Yet even companies have their constraints.

Money Machines will deliver unprecedented economies of scale for humans and enterprises. Agents never sleep, face no geographic barriers, and need no payroll accounts. They operate across time zones, serve thousands of customers simultaneously, and make decisions autonomously 24/7. They can negotiate, execute, and settle globally—in milliseconds.

The bottleneck has never been knowledge itself—but rather the people or organizations in which that knowledge is trapped. Soon, Money Machines will become the fundamental unit of economic organization—just as commanding an army of agents will become standard for founders.

Related infrastructure is being built in real time: development frameworks like @OpenClaw; stablecoins like @USDC and @withAUSD; wallets like @privy; blockchains like @arc, @solana, @tempo, and @base; onchain financial protocols like @aave and @Morpho; and identity systems enabling agents to participate in the economy as first-class economic actors. These are exactly the areas we aim to invest in.

The convergence of the internet and finance has been brewing for thirty years—Money Machines represent the culmination of that fusion.

Startup Opportunities

01 · Agent Equity & Investment Banking

The agent economy already runs on tokens. As agents continually discover new opportunities, how do we identify, price, distribute, and render those opportunities transparent to capital—scalably? We need infrastructure to capitalize agent businesses—for example, fractional ownership of productive AI systems, revenue-share tokens, and onchain agent DAOs (this is the true vision of DAOs)—transforming Money Machines into investable, tradable assets. If agents become the dominant economic actors, then agent ownership will become one of the most important asset classes in history.

Reference Projects: @legiondotcc

02 · Compute Exchange & Marketplace

As agent count surges, compute power will become a commodity requiring effective pricing, trading, and allocation. We need financial infrastructure for GPU capacity—including spot markets, futures, and options—to standardize compute as the raw material of the agent economy, enabling risk transfer, redeemability, and more.

Reference Projects: @OrnnExchange, Silicon Data, Computer Exchange, Pluto Trade, @computeindex

03 · Liquidity Operating System

Cross-border fund transfers are largely solved—but last-mile conversion remains a bottleneck. In regions like Nigeria, Kenya, and Mexico, payment service providers commonly suffer from USD liquidity shortages—converting stablecoin settlements into local fiat is slow, manual, and costly. As agents and smart contracts begin routing payments automatically at global scale, this bottleneck will cap the entire agent economy’s growth. We have an opportunity to build a programmable short-term liquidity infrastructure—integrated directly into payment flows—to underwrite invisible risks that traditional finance cannot reach.

04 · Agent Services Marketplace

Think of this as Craigslist for agents—a marketplace where individuals and businesses deploy their expertise as monetizable agent services (e.g., legal consultation, research analysis, financial modeling, creative production) for hire by other agents or humans. Reputation mechanisms are built into the protocol. This will democratize entrepreneurship at scale.

Reference Projects: @crunchDAO

05 · Agent Identity & Reputation Systems

Trust is the bedrock of commerce. To enable transactions between agents, and between agents and humans, we need a verifiable, persistent identity layer. We’re seeking decentralized identity and reputation credentials designed for AI agents: verifiable performance records, scope of authority, attestations of behavior, and trust scores accumulated over time onchain.

06 · Yield-as-an-API

Yield still follows bank hours—requiring brokerage accounts, wire transfers, and T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles. This model wasn’t built for software—but software is about to become the world’s largest allocator of capital. Enterprises and agents entering the token economy need yield—not during business hours, not via brokerage accounts, but as a 24/7, programmable API call.

Reference Projects: Yield.xyz, @superformxyz

07 · Credit Infrastructure

Agents need credit to finance transactions, secure working capital, and scale operations. But agents aren’t legal entities. We have an opportunity to build novel credit primitives based on stablecoins, smart contracts, and card infrastructure—extending funds to cards and wallets controlled by agents, with programmable repayment and risk controls that require no human co-signature.

08 · Compliance Infrastructure for Tokenized Securities

Tokenization of equities, bonds, and funds is underway. What’s missing is the compliance layer—KYC/AML, transfer restrictions, investor verification, reporting, and regulatory interoperability—that enables tokenized securities to flow at blockchain speed without violating securities law. When agents begin autonomously managing portfolios, executing trades, and allocating capital, compliant tokenized securities will become the essential asset layer they operate on—no human brokers required.

Reference Projects: @DinariGlobal, @0xPredicate

09 · Agent Payment Authorization & Spend Controls

Agents need autonomous payment capabilities—but humans need guardrails or a programmable authorization layer—such as spending limits on cards and wallets, counterparty whitelists, and multi-signature approvals—placed between agent intent and transaction execution. This is essentially a reimagining of corporate spend management, purpose-built for non-human actors operating on card rails and stablecoin rails.

Reference Projects: @sponge_wallet, @privy

10 · Stablecoin Treasury & Cash Management

As stablecoins become the global default settlement layer, businesses—from startups to multinationals—need treasury infrastructure to manage stablecoin and fiat assets: yield optimization, FX conversion, payroll, supplier payments, and regulatory reporting. Agents will exponentially enhance this infrastructure’s effectiveness—automating treasury balancing, routing payments to the most cost-efficient channels, and generating reports without finance teams. This is a CFO toolkit rebuilt for the age of agents.

11 · Cross-Chain Settlement & Interoperability for Agents

Agents don’t care which chain they’re on—they care about cost, speed, and finality. Yet liquidity remains fragmented. Abstraction layers can grant agents chain-agnostic execution: routing to optimal venues and settling on optimal chains—without agents (or their human operators) needing to manage cross-chain bridges, wrapped assets, or gas tokens.

Reference Projects: @LayerZero_Core, @ubyx

12 · Data Monetization & Provenance Networks

Agents consume massive amounts of data—market data feeds, proprietary research, behavioral signals. We need infrastructure enabling data producers to monetize access programmatically—with onchain provenance, usage tracking, and micropayment settlement. For example: a decentralized data marketplace where agents are buyers and human experts are sellers.