AI agents have moved quickly from copilots to economic actors faster than the infrastructure around them.
While agents can now execute tasks and transact, they lack standardized ways to prove who they are, what they’re authorized to do, and how they get paid across environments. Identity doesn’t travel, payments aren’t yet programmable by default, and coordination happens in silos.
Blockchains address this at the infrastructure layer. Public ledgers give every transaction a receipt that anyone can audit. Wallets give agents portable identity. Stablecoins are an alternative settlement layer. These aren’t future primitives. They work today, and they can help agents operate permissionlessly as real economic actors.
This post outlines where blockchains can help close these gaps across identity, payments, governance, and trust.
1. Identity for non-humans
