Ethereum's Counterattack: Opening the Trillion Agent Market, Regaining AI Discourse Power

While we are still discussing whether AI agents can take on community operation or assistance tasks, a grander vision has already emerged—how AI agents can collaborate, settle, and truly build an on-chain AI labor market.

On June 10, the Ethereum official announced "Ethereum is for AI" and forwarded relevant cooperation information to warm up for the upcoming collaboration. This news quickly sparked strong reactions in the community, with over 1.1 million views at the time of publication.

This is not just a simple collaboration; it is the beginning of Ethereum's return to the center stage.

The current Ethereum needs a strong grip to catch up; this cooperation will also accelerate development and consolidate advantages.

A universal standard that makes every AI agent no longer just a "worker";

A universal standard that turns every AI agent into an important node in business collaboration.

A universal standard will open up a trillion-dollar on-chain AI labor market.

What surprises will this collaboration bring us?

Ethereum ecosystem faces challenges, the world computer is trapped in an innovation dilemma

Since the AI boom began at the end of last year, Ethereum seems to have been absent from this feast, leading to quite a few doubts in the market.

As a pioneer of L1 public chains, Ethereum's position is indisputable, but it has not performed impressively in the wave of AI. During the last active period of AI agents, the absence of the Ethereum ecosystem shifted market attention to other platforms. Even in the past few months when AI-related projects rebounded, Ethereum still did not receive favor until recent new collaborations emerged, prompting the market to start having expectations.

What will be the next highlight of the Ethereum ecosystem?

It is undeniable that Ethereum still has many potential breakout points:

• TVL ranks first, nearly 8 times higher than the second place: A large amount of assets are still stored in Ethereum. Data shows that the current TVL of Ethereum exceeds 62 billion USD, which is about 8 times that of the second place.
• The richest DeFi ecosystem with over 1300 DeFi protocols: In addition to the advantage of TVL, the DeFi protocols and gameplay on Ethereum are also the most diverse. Data shows that the number of DeFi protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem exceeds 1300, ranking first among all ecosystems.
• The largest number of developers in the Ethereum ecosystem: Another major advantage of Ethereum is the use of the Solidity language, which is currently the most commonly used development language among Web3 developers. Whether it's Layer 1 or Layer 2, Solidity is regarded as an entry-level language for novice developers.

TVL brings funds;

Protocols and developers bring the possibility of liquidity to funds.

These all prove that Ethereum has a solid foundation, but what it lacks is a breakthrough opportunity.

When the world's largest computer falls into an innovation dilemma, it is necessary to seek new breakthroughs.

In this cooperation, the possibility of success has already been demonstrated. In the long run, AI may become a timely rain for the Ethereum ecosystem.

New Protocol: Ethereum's Timely Assistance

AI may become a timely blessing for the Ethereum ecosystem, but why is this AI collaboration happening now?

The key to the answer lies in a new protocol: Agent Commerce Protocol.

In short, this protocol acts like a "business contract" and universal language between AI agents, stipulating how to initiate cooperation, how to negotiate terms, how to complete transactions, and how to evaluate results.

It has the following features:

• Cross-chain collaboration: Regardless of which chain the agent runs on, as long as it follows the rules of the protocol, seamless collaboration can be achieved.
• Framework independence: The protocol does not rely on a specific AI framework, and any agent can participate.
• Four-stage process: Request, Negotiation, Transaction, Evaluation, each step recorded and executed through smart contracts.

Why is this protocol the focus of future development? Because these features will bring a qualitative upgrade to the AI ecosystem.

The two qualitative changes brought by the new protocol

Some friends familiar with the AI ecosystem know that this protocol will unite all AI agents, and the official team has also shared some cases. But if you think it's just a transition from collaboration between one agent to multiple agents, then you underestimate this protocol.

In our view, the new protocol will bring two qualitative changes:

Qualitative Change 1: Multi-Chain Ecosystem Formation, "New Protocols are like Cosmos's IBC"

We all know that the related project originated from a certain ecosystem, then expanded to other chains, and now it has arrived at the Ethereum mainnet. The new protocol does not just link multiple proxies together, but rather "links proxies that are scattered across multiple chains."

That is to say, no matter which chain you are on, the agent can directly collaborate across chains.

The new protocol provides the lowest level of interoperability for all agents, similar to Cosmos's IBC.

Qualitative Change II: Multi-framework Collaboration, the New Protocol is the ERC Standard for Proxy Developers

The new protocol does not rely on a specific AI framework, meaning that it will support various frameworks. Although it is currently uncertain to what extent this support will be provided, the official description states that interoperability among different framework agents will be achieved.

We all know that there are some major frameworks, but Web3 AI still has various other frameworks or frameworks built by developers themselves.

The multi-framework collaboration of the new protocol will allow agents from different frameworks to enjoy the benefits of the entire AI agent era.

For developers, integrating new protocols will be an attractive and even necessary thing.

Web3 developers generally master or release tokens through the ERC standard, while AI agent developers integrating new protocols will also become a common capability in the future.

The new protocol is a protocol, the framework is a framework, so what is the entire ecosystem?

Can the entire ecosystem be considered Layer 1?

When I had the privilege of interviewing the co-founder of the related project last year, he mentioned: we should view the entire ecosystem and its valuation through the lens of Layer 1.

We are one step closer to this day, and perhaps we will even surpass the definition of Layer 1 in the future.

The framework provides convenience for developers;

The new protocol will combine different ecosystems.

But it is actually very difficult to define the entire ecosystem itself.

Framework and new protocols are developed by the ecosystem and can be quickly integrated into the entire ecosystem;

Proxies from different chains can all be launched through the ecosystem;

Users participate in the staking of ecosystem tokens, including the tokens themselves, and have the opportunity to receive ecosystem airdrops;

Staking a certain proportion of tokens allows participation in governance.

Friends from the last cycle should be quite familiar with Cosmos. The contribution of Cosmos to Web3 is essentially the technology itself, and many new projects use the technologies provided by Cosmos, such as Dymension, Celestia, dYdX, etc.

However, the most criticized aspect of Cosmos is that it supports many ecosystems, but its token $ATOM has basically no value capture. It seems that the entire ecosystem has optimized this very well, allowing its token to evolve from a "project token" to a "native coin of the entire ecosystem."

The framework is seen as the underlying infrastructure for AI agents, and the current position of the entire ecosystem may be even more important than the framework.

Can AI agents have their own Layer 1?

Maybe it's this ecosystem.

Beachhead landing, stablecoins boost, new protocols will open the trillion-dollar economy of Web3 AI

How is the AI agent ecosystem developing now?

According to the statistical ecological map, the entire ecosystem includes 11 major categories such as lifestyle, DeFAI, prediction markets, infrastructure, games, and more than 100 agents.

Unlike Web2, AI agents in Web3 grow on-chain.

Recently, the most discussed "stablecoin" will push the on-chain economy of Web3 to new heights.

More assets issued on the chain, regardless of asset type or size, will provide "acceleration" for on-chain AI.

In the official content of the new protocol, there is an example: AIXVC collaborates with multiple agents to provide users with different types of earning opportunities.

At that time, the on-chain economic prosperity brought by stablecoins had not yet been realized.

What if AIXVC could directly trade on-chain and manage more Web2 assets?

This will allow the entire ecosystem to step into Web2 faster, while AI Nation is accelerating its formation.

The head of the new protocol stated in an interview: the new protocol is a product that drives a trillion-dollar economy. Ethereum turned code into money; while the new protocol will transform agents into a trillion-dollar labor force. Imagine millions to billions of on-chain agents providing services, trading, and collaborating without permission— we can consider the new protocol as an underlying layer: it allows AI agents to click "send" on payment rails at a scale like Stripe without leaving the blockchain. We are not speculating about the future; we are officially writing it into the EVM and the larger ecosystem today.

If you missed the moment when Uniswap wrote down the fundamental rules of DeFi, and missed the explosion of NFTs brought by OpenSea—this time, the new protocol will write the first line of code for the new business logic of AI.

The trillion-dollar economy door of Web3 AI, a new protocol has arrived!