AI Agent-Driven Payment Infrastructure: A New Paradigm in the Encryption Industry

For the past century, the basic unit of economic activity has been humanity. However, the rise of AI technology is reshaping this landscape, transforming machines from passive tools into "active economic entities"—AI Agents.

Recently, the stablecoin USDT announced its integration into the Bitcoin ecosystem, covering its base layer and the Lightning Network. Behind these trends, a transformation is brewing: AI Agent-driven payment infrastructure is driving the cryptocurrency industry into a new wave of innovation. From the consensus layer of Bitcoin to the execution layer of smart contracts, and then to the AI-driven application layer, the cryptocurrency industry may welcome a paradigm innovation of AI + PayFi + BTC infrastructure, promoting the self-renewal from Web2 to 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 introduction of cryptocurrency-friendly policies, the U.S. government will gradually provide regulatory clarity for cryptocurrencies, and the application scenarios for stablecoins will gradually expand. The development of stablecoin payments in the next decade may look as follows:

Short term (1-3 years): Stablecoins will dominate cross-border remittances, providing faster and cheaper solutions 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): Enterprises will increasingly adopt stablecoin payments due to the low costs, instant settlement, and programmability of stablecoins. Companies will be able to seamlessly convert between cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, providing 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, thoroughly disrupting traditional financial infrastructure.

Stablecoins also provide entrepreneurs with an easier platform to develop new payment products. It is estimated that if medium to large enterprises can use stablecoin solutions in transactions, their profits could increase by 2%. Additionally, some countries have attempted to use stablecoins for international trade to bypass traditional settlement systems. An increasing number of cases show that stablecoins are gradually approaching the optimal position for their market fit.

2. AI Agents: The New User Experience Layer for Future Applications

We are entering the "era of AI agents becoming independent market participants." This change involves AI-driven financial trading, intelligent supply chain management, and generative AI providing services to content creators, developers, and businesses. AI agents can even autonomously negotiate, trade, settle, and optimize their resource utilization.

At the end of last year, we saw AI Agents redefine the scenarios of decentralized applications. Some AI Agents are capable of autonomously using tokens for transactions, generating content, and even managing their own encryption wallets and assets. The evolution of this capability has given rise to innovative concepts in the encryption field, such as certain protocols allowing investment in various AI Agents.

The constantly evolving capabilities of AI Agents, combined with convenient issuance platforms, have opened up huge market opportunities for the concept of AI Agent + Crypto. AI is becoming an active participant in the on-chain ecosystem, driving the shift of blockchain applications from being tool-based 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 user intentions and preferences, combined with real-time market information. Users do not need to understand complex technical details, as an AI personal finance assistant may autonomously manage taxes, insurance, and rental income and expenses, dynamically optimize investment portfolios, and even automatically execute trades based on market changes.

To ensure security, Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) have become a key infrastructure, ensuring that the behavior of AI Agents strictly adheres to predefined logic through isolated computing environments and is not subject to external manipulation. AI may also operate decentralized physical infrastructure nodes or verify data, becoming the core executor of distributed systems.

The workflows and application scenarios of these AI Agents are outlining a brand new "machine economy" landscape: from gamers to infrastructure managers, from content creators to financial strategists, AI Agents will become the core driving force of the on-chain ecosystem.

3. The Dilemma of the Existing Payment System

Although AI Agents will become an important force in the market, there are many limitations in the existing payment systems:

3.1 Economic Imbalance in Micropayments

The high transaction fees of traditional payment networks make high-frequency small transactions by AI agents impractical. For example, if an AI agent conducts 1,000 transactions per second, each worth $0.0001, but the traditional payment network may charge a fee of $0.30, this cost structure renders the AI economy unfeasible.

3.2 The fatal flaw of settlement speed

AI agents require millisecond-level settlement speed, but traditional payment networks have extremely lagging settlement methods:

• Credit Card Payment: 1-3 days
• International transfer: 2-5 days
• Cryptocurrency payment: an average of 10 minutes or longer

3.3 Limitations of Centralized Architecture

AI agents are essentially global and not limited by geographical boundaries. However, traditional payment systems are mired in issues such as bank accounts, fiat currency compliance, and regional payment rules:

• Bank account dependency: AI agents cannot open bank accounts like humans.
• Centralized Control: The trading of AI agents may be rejected due to regulatory or compliance issues.
• International payment barriers: Cross-border transactions face cumbersome compliance requirements

3.4 Five Core Requirements of the AI Economic Payment System

The future payment system serving AI must possess the following core capabilities:

1. Micro-payment capability: Supports transactions of very small amounts, with transaction fees approaching zero.
2. Millisecond-level transaction settlement: real-time settlement, rather than waiting for minutes or days.
3. Decentralization and Anti-Censorship: AI agents need to trade autonomously, without relying on centralized financial institutions.
4. Global Availability: Supports cross-border transactions, avoiding reliance on bank accounts.
5. Intelligent Payment Protocol: Seamless interaction with AI agents, supporting automatic settlement, smart trading routing, liquidity optimization, and other features.

4. The Hope and Limitations of Blockchain Payment

Blockchain technology has brought hope to the AI economy, but mainstream blockchains still face some issues:

4.1 High costs of payments on the Ethereum network

Ethereum is the main infrastructure for decentralized finance, but high transaction costs make it difficult for the AI economy to adopt. During network congestion, simple transactions can incur fees of 10-50 dollars, making it challenging to support the high-frequency trading needs of AI agents.

4.2 Other high-performance public chains' speed and centralization issues

Some high-performance public chains offer faster transaction processing capabilities, but they often have a higher degree of centralization, which poses security risks. Some public chains have experienced multiple outages, affecting transaction stability. Most public chains rely on a small number of validating nodes, which may impact their decentralization properties.

4.3 Bitcoin mainnet scalability bottleneck

Bitcoin, as the most secure and decentralized blockchain, is unmatched in its security, but its payment capability is limited. The mainnet transaction throughput is low (only 7 transactions per second), and when faced with high transaction volumes, fees soar, making it unsuitable for small payments by AI agents.

Lightning Network: A New Stage for Stablecoin Payments

The Lightning Network, as a second-layer scaling solution for Bitcoin, leverages the security of the Bitcoin network to achieve instant, low-cost, and scalable transaction capabilities. It currently has over 15,000 nodes and more than 50,000 channels, demonstrating robust ecological potential.

However, the Lightning Network previously only supported Bitcoin as a payment currency, limiting its application scenarios. The introduction of stablecoins is crucial, as only currencies with stable value can be widely accepted for everyday payments.

A well-known stablecoin issuer has integrated its stablecoin into the Lightning Network, which is significant. This not only reflects recognition of the security and usability of the Lightning Network but also brings real users and transaction fee revenue to the public chain. This marks the arrival of an era where the Lightning Network truly showcases its potential after years of development.

5. Everything is ready, just waiting for the favorable wind to come.

The explosive growth of AI agents is giving rise to a trillion-level machine economy, but traditional payment networks and existing blockchain solutions struggle to support its demands. The integration of stablecoins into the Lightning Network seems to provide a key piece of the puzzle for the industry - a near-zero-cost, censorship-resistant payment channel, combined with the liquidity of stablecoins, perfectly fits the micro-payment and real-time trading scenarios of AI agents.

Therefore, a new payment solution has emerged. It is not just a simple stacking of technology stacks, but a "financial operating system" tailored for the AI economy, allowing the AI economy to truly break free from the shackles of payment and step into a future of autonomous interaction. In the future AI economy, there is no need to wait—payment equals efficiency, and transactions equal intelligence.

6. The Integration of Lightning Network, Stablecoins, and AI Agents: Restructuring the Payment Foundation of the AI Economy

6.1 Four-layer technical architecture

The architecture of the new payment solution can be divided into four core levels:

a. Settlement Layer

• Underlying Network: Bitcoin Network (L1) + Lightning Network (L2)
• Advantages: high security, millisecond transaction confirmation, nearly zero fees

b. Payment Layer

• Multi-chain support: Compatible with public chains like Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, etc.
• Stablecoin integration: Native stablecoins circulate on the Lightning Network through protocols alongside other mainstream stablecoins.

c. Smart Payment Layer

• AI Native Protocol: Empower 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, optimizing payment efficiency.

d. Governance Layer

• DAO mechanism: jointly governed by token holders, deciding on protocol upgrades, fee allocation, etc.
• Incentive mechanism: Liquidity providers stake tokens to earn rewards, with a portion of the transaction fees used for token burning.

6.2 How to Redefine AI Economic Payments?

This new payment solution is not just a simple extension of traditional blockchain payments, but a revolutionary infrastructure specifically designed for the AI economy. By integrating the decentralized efficiency of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, the liquidity guarantees of stablecoins, and the intelligent decision-making capabilities of AI-native protocols, it has constructed a payment network with nearly zero costs and millisecond response times, completely breaking through the high costs and inefficiencies of traditional systems.

Here, AI agents can autonomously complete micropayments, real-time settlements for decentralized physical infrastructure node contribution rewards, and even dynamically optimize cross-chain transaction paths without human intervention. From cross-border enterprise payments to high-frequency trading in automated financial strategies, the adaptability of this solution is driving the rise of the machine economy.

Through multi-chain compatibility and DAO governance, it not only addresses the fragmentation of the existing payment ecosystem but also sets a new standard for human-machine collaboration in the decentralized era with the guise of a "financial operating system." When stablecoins become mainstream settlement tools and the lightning network connects global value flows, its vision is: to allow the machine economy to grow freely in a frictionless smart network.

7. Conclusion

When AI agents autonomously complete transactions, investments, and even pay taxes on the chain, payment is no longer just a tool, but rather the circulatory system of the machine economy. The lightning network provides the vessels, stablecoins act as the blood, and AI agents become the heart—this silent revolution illuminates the future payment ecosystem like lightning. The future of payments no longer belongs to any institution or country, but to every autonomously operating AI and the nodes participating in co-construction. Here, code is law, efficiency is justice, and true innovation is just beginning.