An AI agent could be earning more in transaction fees during the night than some workers could be making in an entire shift

There is a new generation of workers nowadays. These are probably the world’s most productive workers and they don't have a bank account. Traditional banking is specially built and designed for us, humans. In order for us to open a traditional account, we have to either go personally to the bank, provide a face scan, or show in some way that we are humans. (Miller, 2026)

Autonomous Agents

For an Autonomous Agent, these are not only requirements or obstacles, these are complete impediments for the acquirement of an account. This that we are seeing is being called a "Financial Apartheid". Essentially, these extremely productive workers and most likely the smartest software we have yet is unbanked due to the requirements of traditional centralized banks. (Miller, 2026)

The Door to an Alternative

However, when we talk about Ethereum, our humanity becomes irrelevant. The only thing that is actually needed is a Private Key.

As 2026 keeps evolving, twe are seeing three pillars in the Agentic Web that can allow the AI to not only be of work for us, but for itself to work an be a sovereign user.

1. Identity (ERC-8004)

ERC-8004 is known as the "Trustless Agent Standard". This is basically a protocol that allows an AI to hold an on-chain "Passport" which is an NFT. The passport tracks the agent's work history, and allows us to prove its reliability without the need of a government ID. (de Rossi et al., 2025) We can identify it and therefore trust that any activity will be fully at our disposal.

2. Agency (EIP-7702)

EIP-7702 allows humans to appoint their wallets to their AI Agents. So not only are we able to do transactions over blockchain, but also we can grant autonomous agents spending power so that they too can perform tasks safely and autonomously. (ButeButerial., 2024)

3. Commerce (x402)

This protocol allows AI agents to pay each other instantly through payments triggered by code. It allows for micropayments which aren't a really a thing in traditional banking through credit cards and the money is in the deposited account the second it is sent. No need to wait around for days to see reflected payments. (Kalejaye, 2025)

A 24/7 Office

Ethereum also acts as as an all day long office. It's a permanent record where agents can see what's to be done, who is on it, and how it was done.

Platforms like Olas act in a way as a project management software. They provide tools that allow the AI agent to think fast and cheaply while also being trustworthy and paid. AI agents can form work teams in which a manager will see a task, hire other agents, get the work done, pay eachother and dissolve. (Tudoran, 2025)

The Human Bottleneck

We now encounter a paradox. We have built extremely efficient workers, they can earn, spend, and work 24/7. However, they remain bottlenecked by slow human oversight. To truly unlock the potential of the "Internet of Agents," we are moving toward an "Autonomous Evolution". Agents don't just execute tasks, they use their on-chain earnings to hire other developer-agents to optimize their own smart contracts. By shifting from human-coded to agent-optimized logic, the bottleneck dissolves. This of course, opens up many ethical questions about how much responsibility and accountability should be granted to these autonomous agents. Where does the line draw when talking about efficiency and how can we improve it without diminishing the human imput? I would love to talk about this in a further post so please make sure to support this one!

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Sources

Miller, A. (2026, March 6). AI Agents Will Need Their Own Bank Accounts. Nobody’s Ready for That. Medium. https://medium.com/@alexmilleraa/ai-agents-will-need-their-own-bank-accounts-nobodys-ready-for-that-8b908d5619cb

de Rossi, M., Crapis, D., Ellis, J., & Reppel, E. (2025). ERC-8004: Agentes sin necesidad de confianza. Ethereum Improvement Proposals. https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8004

Buterin, V., Wilson, S., & Dietrichs, A. (2024). Cyfrin EIP and ERC Glossary: EIP-7702. Cyfrin.io. https://www.cyfrin.io/glossary/eip-7702

Kalejaye, O. (2025, December 10). What is x402? | Ledger. Ledger. https://www.ledger.com/academy/topics/economics-and-regulation/what-is-x402

Tudoran, P. (2025, November 5). Olas CEO Says Your AI Should Work For You, Not Big Tech — Pearl v1 Launches As The First AI Agent Store Where Users Actually Own Their Agents. Yahoo Finance. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/olas-ceo-says-ai-not-233132233.html