Rich by Coin

Neo co-founder Da Hongfei argues that AI is increasingly framed as the next major demand driver for public blockchain networks, and Neo X is designed around this shift toward agentic activity. The op-ed envisions autonomous software agents becoming the primary on-chain users over the next decade, executing goals, coordinating actions, and settling results directly on-chain. It frames a history of crypto milestones—Bitcoin’s permissionless monetary system, Ethereum’s programmable contracts, and automated market makers—as evidence that AI-native infrastructure remains a relatively underexplored vertical. Within Neo’s ecosystem, Neo X is positioned as the environment optimized for agentic activity, where users will express goals to personal agents and agents handle execution, coordination, and settlement on-chain.

The op-ed outlines several key ways Neo X is intended to meet the needs of AI agents, including agent identity via EIP-8004. Agent-to-agent coordination primitives, and a skill index are described to reduce reliance on ad hoc off-chain orchestration. SpoonOS is positioned as an “agent operating system” layer that streamlines deployment, configuration, monitoring, upgrades, and multi-agent collaboration. NeoFS provides context and memory, storing agent state, strategies, and outcomes to support continuity across sessions.

Privacy for sensitive logic is described as combining trusted execution environments and zero-knowledge techniques to protect proprietary strategies and reduce vulnerability to adversarial behaviors such as transaction-level exploitation. The op-ed describes a dBFT finality model upgraded with BLS signatures while maintaining one-block finality, targeting environments where immediate settlement guarantees are necessary. Da characterizes Neo X as a blank slate that can iterate faster on agent-native primitives, while Neo N3 continues to evolve its existing stack with backward compatibility. Neo X’s economic design centers on GAS as the utility asset that prices core consumption across the agent stack, with GAS used for on-chain execution, agent services, and storage, including protocol-level payments via x402.