The crypto business might have basically misunderstood the metaverse, in response to Animoca Manufacturers chairman Yat Siu, who argues that the subsequent section of digital economies would arrive not by VR headsets or immersive digital worlds, however by fleets of AI brokers transacting throughout blockchain networks behind the scenes.
Siu stated the metaverse possibly coming to us fairly than being a spot that people go to, throughout his keynote at Consensus Miami 2026.
For Animoca, this marked a definite pivot from the pandemic-era imaginative and prescient of the metaverse it as soon as championed, through which customers have been anticipated to spend rising quantities of their social and financial lives in immersive digital worlds.
Siu now says the extra consequential shift could also be AI methods working within the bodily world on behalf of people, dealing with transactions, bookings, coordination and commerce within the background whereas blockchain networks perform because the infrastructure connecting these brokers.
As a substitute, Siu argued the subsequent section of the web might revolve round AI methods working repeatedly within the background of on a regular basis life, dealing with duties corresponding to bookings, funds, scheduling, and on-line transactions on behalf of customers.
He stated customers might finally depend on dozens, and even lots of, of AI brokers to coordinate their digital actions, with blockchain networks serving because the monetary and id infrastructure connecting these methods.
“I believe the purpose is that it’s going to be extra brokers than people,” Siu stated, predicting there might finally be “50 to 100 billion brokers roaming basically on the web.”
That shift, he argued, might additionally clear up considered one of crypto’s longest-running issues: onboarding atypical customers.
Whereas an estimated 700 million to 800 million folks globally now personal some type of cryptocurrency, Siu famous that fewer than 70 million actively use blockchain purposes as a result of crypto stays technically intimidating for mainstream customers.
“My mother’s not going to be utilizing MetaMask,” he stated. “It’s laborious for her.”
AI brokers, nonetheless, might work together naturally with wallets, good contracts, and decentralized finance methods as a result of they function immediately by code, he argued.
In contrast to people, brokers wouldn’t want conventional banking infrastructure and will transact autonomously on-chain.
“Blockchain expertise is the perfect monetary system for machines,” Siu stated. “We, the people, have been principally the guinea pigs.”
The broader argument mirrored a rising narrative inside elements of the crypto business that blockchain’s most scalable customers might in the end be autonomous software program brokers fairly than people.
In that framework, wallets, tokens, decentralized id methods, and on-chain funds develop into machine infrastructure powering an rising “agent financial system.”
As a part of that push, Animoca introduced a $10 million funding initiative for builders constructing AI agent purposes by its Animoca Minds platform.
If Siu’s imaginative and prescient materializes, the subsequent main wave of blockchain adoption might not come from thousands and thousands of recent human customers studying to navigate crypto wallets, however from billions of AI brokers transacting autonomously with each other behind the scenes.
