How crypto AI agents are reshaping onchain interactions

Since January of 2025, 4.5 million daily users have engaged with Crypto AI agents. 

From helping new entrants overcome common technical hurdles to automating fundamental tasks such as portfolio management, the adoption has been extensive. Still, despite its growing popularity, much remains unknown about AI’s current role in the crypto ecosystem. 

In this article, we'll unpack the intricacies surrounding AI agents, show how they're reshaping onchain interactions, and give several ways organizations can leverage them to ship next-gen experiences in web3 at scale.

What are Crypto AI agents?

Crypto AI agents are autonomous software systems designed to act on behalf of users and organizations as digital operators. These agents independently interpret data, analyze dynamic patterns, and reason through complex objectives in order to take autonomous or pre-determined actions. 

Within the context of crypto, AI agents are commonly used for the following:

Perceiving vast streams of onchain data

Crypto AI agents can analyze blockchain transactions, price movements, social media sentiment, external news feeds, and much more to provide a real-time view of market dynamics.

Mitigating risk in fast-moving crypto markets

Organizations can leverage these AI agents’ ability to collect insights to enable proactive risk mitigation while preserving their internal bandwidth. 

Streamlining the web3 user experience

AI’s impact on onboarding and transaction flows has been significant. From natural language-based trading to guided wallet creation, AI agents empower organizations to streamline adoption from even the most non-technical users. 

Real-world value: From crypto traders to organizations

AI agents have already driven tangible benefits for both retail crypto traders and organizations alike. Veteran crypto traders benefit from automating fundamental onchain actions and unlocking access to new AI-powered experiences, such as gamification and digital collectibles. 

For newcomers stepping into the crypto space, AI-powered flows eliminate the need for in-depth knowledge of gas fee management, cross-chain transfers, or other traditionally technical barriers to entry. 

Organizations benefit from improved internal efficiency and user retention through AI-powered experiences. For crypto coins and blockchain communities, this can translate to increased user engagement and more resilient agent ecosystems.

For example, Parallel Studios leverages AI agents to help users autonomously execute trades for digital collectibles linked to its sci-fi TCG game. This automation not only supports newcomers entering Parallel's gaming ecosystem but also helps promote the continuous growth of the game's user base. 

Its use of AI crypto agents extends the possibilities of agent performance in dynamic in-game marketplaces.

As onchain AI agents commandeer more fundamental tasks, organizations also benefit from the reallocation of internal resources to higher-value activities, freeing staff to focus on strategic innovation and product development. 

This is especially impactful for blockchain projects trying to scale with limited human input, allowing lean teams to maintain momentum.

Leading use cases for AI agents in the current crypto ecosystem

While the applications surrounding AI agents evolve continuously, web3 organizations currently capitalize on several distinct use cases. These include:

Autonomous DeFi trading and market analysis

AI agents execute DeFi trades, identify trends, and optimize transaction timing based on real-time market data, all with little to no human intervention. These capabilities are now increasingly built into agent apps that monitor liquidity pools and decentralized exchange activity to generate high-frequency insights.

This 24/7 market participation also ensures experienced retail and institutional crypto traders capitalize on time-sensitive opportunities, such as the release of new tokens. 

The benefits of autonomous trading extend to crypto newcomers, with AI agents helping them execute complex transaction flows via natural language. This user-friendly entry point helps integrate more participants into agent networks without requiring technical depth.

Crypto portfolio and asset management

Managing token portfolios is a laborious process, requiring constant attention to staking, liquidity, and market movements. AI agents streamline the most fundamental tasks in portfolio management, including:

• Staking optimization: dynamically reallocating tokens to secure the highest yield
• Liquidity management: automatically adjusting positions based on market sentiment and volatility
• Gas fee processing: connecting and using external wallets as paymasters to streamline the processing of gas fees

These automated workflows improve portfolio performance while reducing time spent on maintenance — particularly for users managing assets across multiple chains or protocols.

Governance and DAO automation

AI agents can also interact directly with DAO governance systems — submitting proposals, voting according to pre-set policies, and even monitoring the ecosystem for manipulation or security risks.

This level of automation introduces a new layer of resilience and responsiveness in decentralized operations. It helps facilitate more efficient and dynamic governance, enabling the level of always-on monitoring needed to support secure, large-scale decentralized organizations.

As blockchain projects scale, the integration of agent coins and DAO-ready agents with real-time data feeds strengthens security and trust.

Purchasing and selling digital collectibles

Navigating the fast-paced world of digital collectibles is challenging, especially given the constant price volatility and frequent collection releases. AI agents help traders by:

• Automatically identifying price trends across collections and setting competitive listings
• Executing purchases or sales at optimal times
• Handling transfers and payments without user intervention

These simplified workflows lower the barriers to entry into the digital collectibles market, while giving power users the tools to manage high-volume trading strategies. In some ecosystems, these agent-driven tools also allow seamless transitions between trading digital assets and participating in liquidity pools or agent ecosystems, all within the same interface.

Key considerations and challenges surrounding crypto AI agents

As AI agents take on increasingly impactful roles in web3, they also introduce new risks. 

Secure deployment requires more than just technical integration. It involves designing for trust, intent verification, controlled access, and real-world contingencies. Without these, AI agents can become vectors for errors, exploitations, or system-wide failure.

Key considerations and challenges include:.

Permission scoping

One of the foundational challenges in securely deploying crypto AI agents is limiting their permissions to only what is strictly necessary. Overly broad permissions increase risk surfaces, potentially exposing user assets if an agent is compromised. 

Enforcing least privilege through robust policy engines and meticulously crafted role-based access controls (RBAC) minimizes risk without compromising flexibility. For particularly sensitive onchain actions, multi-signature approvals are also effective in reigning in AI agent autonomy.

User intent verification

AI agents operate with heightened autonomy, which raises unique challenges in ensuring each action accurately reflects user intent. 

To achieve user intent, organizations often rely on explicit, cryptographically verifiable authorization flows and verifiable audit logs to ensure no agent action goes unnoticed or unaccounted for. 

Intent verification flows need to be kept simple and clear, as overly complex approval routines can lead to user fatigue. Context-aware prompts, multi-factor approvals, and intuitive interfaces can help balance usability and security, protecting users without introducing friction.

Custody management

These autonomous onchain actions of AI agents also naturally bring up the question of custody, which is an especially daunting subject considering potential regulatory and compliance hurdles. 

Having cryptographic proof that only the agent can control or move funds based on pre-defined user intent can help non-custodial organizations retain their status and provides regulators with a clear view of how AI agents are used.

As agents take on a more autonomous role, well-established procedures for executing emergency asset transfers, revoking agent permissions, or escalating controls to human administrators are crucial. 

Performance and latency

Low-latency signing is a requirement for AI agents to operate as intended. Not only does it ensure onchain actions execute successfully, but it also helps traders capitalize on fleeting opportunities in fast-paced markets. 

Organizations must ensure tight integration between agents, signing infrastructure, and blockchain nodes in order to optimize transactions. 

It’s also important that minimizing latency does not come at the expense of security or auditability. Organizations must continuously benchmark agent workflows, identify and remove bottlenecks, and deploy redundancy in critical components for failover with an overall goal to create a system that is as agile as it is trustworthy.

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How to unlock the benefits of AI agents with Turnkey

Turnkey empowers organizations to create and incorporate scalable AI agent workflows without compromising on security. Here are some of the key features and benefits that set us apart:

Secure non-custodial wallets

AI agents require access to non-custodial wallets to execute onchain actions on behalf of users. 

With Turnkey, organizations can seamlessly provision millions of flexible smart wallets for their agents (each governed by strict policy engines) without relying on third-party verification flows. 

Plus, with verifiable proof of private key control (limited to AI agents and their respective users), organizations can effortlessly prove their non-custodial status.

Flexible policy engine

AI agents require strict guardrails and permissions surrounding what onchain actions they can take. For instance, permissions can specify spending limits, designate multi-signature approval flows, and enforce contextual constraints on onchain operations. 

‍Turnkey’s policy engine serves as an essential control layer that enables organizations to fine-tune these permissions, striking the perfect balance between risk mitigation and flexibility.

Comprehensive security

Unlike other wallet infrastructure solutions, Turnkey isolates private keys, its policy engine, and signing flows entirely in secure enclaves–special trusted execution environments (TEEs)--that ensure AI agent workflows remain both safe and performant. 

Turnkey links all users and agents to unique authenticators, enabling strong identity proofing throughout the transaction lifecycle, recording each executed action in cryptographically verifiable and tamper-proof logs to maintain real-time security and audibility.

This comprehensive coverage ensures AI-driven processes are seamlessly integrated with security and governance frameworks, maintaining operational integrity.

Near-instant transaction speeds

In fast-paced crypto markets, transaction latency can mean the difference between a successful trade and wasted gas fees. Turnkey provides AI agents with sub-100 millisecond signing speeds, which are 50 to 100 times faster than traditional multi-party computation (MPC) setups.

This latency advantage enables AI agents to operate effortlessly across multiple blockchain ecosystems, capitalizing on fast-moving opportunities while avoiding slips or failed executions that plague slower infrastructure. 

The ability to sign and submit transactions near-instantly is a vital component in delivering scalable, responsive automated experiences that users and organizations rely on.

The future of onchain interactions is agentic

AI agents are powering the next generation of onchain interactions. 

As automated, reliable, and secure digital operators, they're raising the bar for what’s possible in DeFi, DAO management, and much more.

For organizations looking to unlock the benefits of AI agents, the first step is implementing wallet infrastructure that combines security, performance, and operational flexibility. Turnkey delivers on each of these requirements, empowering organizations to ship next-gen AI-powered experiences at scale.

Are you ready to join the innovators shaping the future of crypto?

‍Get started with Turnkey today.

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