If autonomous agents become the dominant users of DeFi, blockchains start to do a different job. They operate as coordination and settlement systems for software rather than spaces driven by human timing, sentiment, and speculation. Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, says this could improve how on-chain activity develops. He says: “Recently, blockchain ecosystems have struggled because many tokens have failed to reach escape velocity, and much of the activity has turned into PvP trading, where users try to extract value from each other.”
In his view, “agents may behave in a more cooperative way rather than an extractive one, simply because they tend to act more rationally than human participants.” Dmitry Lazarichev, co-founder of Wirex, focuses on how this changes behaviour: “Once agents become the main actors, the chain starts behaving less like a marketplace of people and more like a piece of machine infrastructure.” “Activity becomes continuous: agents don’t wait for market hours, they don’t get tired, and they don’t trade on mood.” That activity increases efficiency while introducing new stress points.
If AI agents can execute transactions, deploy contracts, or move funds autonomously, liability becomes harder to pin down when something goes wrong. Lazarichev says autonomy cannot serve as an excuse: “The key point is that ‘the agent did it’ can’t become a liability loophole.” “If you deploy an autonomous system that can move value, you should be expected to have basic safeguards in place,” including “permissioning, spending limits, transaction simulation, circuit breakers, and audit logs.” Shangett argues that current legal thinking is still relying on outdated foundations: “We already have laws. They’re just 30 years old and built for a world where software couldn’t talk back. We need something new. And pretending otherwise is just reckless.”
Leave a Reply