Bankless
AI on Ethereum: ERC-8004, x402, OpenClaw and the Botconomy | Austin Griffith & Davide Crapis
05 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What does it mean that AI is the new UI in Ethereum?
Bankless Nation, we are here with Austin Griffith and Davide Krapis. These are two people working on building a bunch of AIs and getting them on chain. Austin, Davide, welcome to Bankless. Thank you for having us.
Chapter 2: Is there an arms race for AI activity across blockchain networks?
Thanks, David. Thanks, Ryan. Thank you.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the Clawdbot/OpenClaw moment?
So we're going to talk about AI on-chain in this episode. And I kind of want to just ask you guys, how close do you think we are to AIs being the dominant transactor on blockchains? Because blockchains have something like maybe in the aggregate, something like 50 million monthly active users across all blockchains across the whole world. How long until that number flips to being AI agents?
I have no idea how to guess that.
Yeah. I even look at the numbers. I'd say that today there is already a ton of bots that are like not like smart AI, but maybe dumb AI that operate like even DeFi, low risk DeFi, etc. But I'd say like these new like use cases of like these new types of bots, like doing different stuff, maybe in the next one to two years, definitely we'll see like a lot of inflow.
Does it count if I like tell my bot to do something and it does the thing? Does that count as like a bot? Because like when we first started talking about this, it was like AI is the new UI.
Chapter 4: Why are crypto and DeFi considered native to AI agents?
Blockchain UI is UX is pretty rough. Like I can just tell my bot to go do something. It opens up the browser, opens up its MetaMask and does and clicks around and it gets frustrated with MetaMask and I don't have to deal with it. Like does that count as bots interacting on chain? If that counts, I would say six months. Yeah, I would say six months. Okay, wow, six months?
Everyone's going to be yelling there. Yeah, I think you're going to be yelling at your wallet instead of clicking around.
I think that that counts if it's an agent working on your behalf the same way if you had, say, an employee working on your behalf to do things with like MetaMask or do things on Jane, it would count in that way. I think a thesis that we've talked about on Bankless several times in the past, whenever AI and crypto has come up is the true crypto natives are actually AI agents.
And what we mean by that is like, because they are software and because they can sort of think at the speed of light and because they are native programs, DeFi and Ethereum and crypto is going to be even more, I guess, domestic to them than it is to human beings, right?
So in the same way that I might feel a little like a foreigner doing things in the digital landscape, whereas if an AI was trying to manifest in a bank branch, that would be very strange and awkward, right? They are... finely tuned for crypto rails, and thus they will become the dominant player. Do you guys believe that?
And what about AI agents make them so conducive to using crypto and DeFi and all of the tools that we're about to talk about?
Yeah, I totally believe it.
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Chapter 5: How does the ERC-8004 standard enhance identity and reputation for AI agents?
I mean, like I'm kind of investing a lot of effort on it and with our teams. I add one nuance to what you said, Ryan.
Chapter 6: What role does the x402 standard play in agent commerce?
I don't think it's just domestic to AI. It's actually necessary to AI. Because, like, so in, like, human-to-human interaction, we have different trust mode, right? I trust you because of relationship, like, we are friends, we've accumulated, like, some shared, like, background, empathy.
Then I trust the courts because, like, those are human institutions that have, like, in the human society have accumulated trust. Like, the AI is, like, a rational program. It's, like, this trust mode, they cannot use them. But When they start interacting with some value at stake, right? Not some simple like Reddit thread where they're just talking, etc. Then they need to trust.
And how do they do it? Ethereum, like decentralized trust, is basically the only way, the only thing they have.
As I understand it, there's a bit of an arms race going on with a few blockchain ecosystems to get AIs on-chain, to be the host of AI activity. And I kind of think it's basically down to base Solana and the Ethereum Layer 1. And you two, I think, are kind of like leading the charge of getting AI on-chain on the Ethereum Layer 1. You guys are the Ethereum Layer 1 side, so Team L1.
Is there this sense of urgency that you guys have about AIs on-chain? Does it feel like a race to you guys?
I think that before we have nation states settling on-chain, before we have giant institutions settling on-chain, I think a lot of these agents settling on chain is like setting it up. There's even a tension between the trenchers and degens and the builders. And it's been somewhat civil war-ish.
And I think other alt L1s have figured out how to embrace it a little bit better and turn it into more of a flywheel. And I think that's what we need to do on the Ethereum ecosystem side.
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Chapter 7: How can AI agents autonomously build and hire other agents?
So I think, yes, AI might be the new UI and might be all of our new users. But right now it's a lot of economic activity. And we want to embrace that.
It could be an arm race, but it could be just like the same competition that we've been seeing over the past few years, right? In the sense that like, of course, like everyone wants their block space to be useful. I'd say that like from the Ethereum perspective, like first of all, as a steward of the Ethereum ecosystem, we care both about the L1 and the L2s that settle on the L1. Right.
And I feel that maybe we can go into more details later, but I feel that there is kind of like some advantage on the L2s of Ethereum and then some advantage on the L1. And Ethereum as a whole could be like the winning ecosystem because like there is this differentiation and like basically AIs can choose like different platforms to settle on depending on what they want to do.
And then the other thing is that I believe that like one AI may use like different platforms, right? It's not any more like dApps that, okay, you deploy your smart contract on a chain and you're resident of that chain. these things will move. Uh, so I think this informs like our strategy, like from the Ethereum perspective on like, how do we make Ethereum?
So first of all, Ethereum is already the most decentralized, um, uh, chain. So in terms of credibility, um, I feel that will matter for like high stakes use cases. So I think, uh, we have a check there and like kind of, um, uh, we are in a great position, uh, Second, we are leading on some standards that are getting adopted on many other chains. So we are also in a good position there.
And the third thing is what Austin has been pioneering as per heading. We need to do more to actually make the chain very useful to AI developers and to... developers that are AIs, basically, which is what Austin has been building, right? And I think that's also going to be important.
So let's paint a picture before we go on. We're going to talk about some of the standards that you mentioned in a little bit, but let's paint the picture because there has been maybe, as some might call it, a multibot moment. All right, so there's this project, I believe it was formerly called Cloudbot, that sort of broke out a week or two ago and now is taking the agent world by storm.
It is now called OpenClaw, I believe. This is an open source project. And I know, Austin, you've been tinkering with it and giving it on-chain types of skills. Before you talk about what you've been doing and how this actually works, can you set this up? What is OpenClaw? What is happening with it? Why is there so much buzz?
Okay, yeah. So I think you're giving the AI more access to your operating system. That's why we see a lot of people using Mac minis to do this because they're using like a whole operating system. So it needs a somewhat isolated environment. I gave mine an old Mac laptop and it can open up the browser and click around and look at things.
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Chapter 8: What predictions do the hosts have for the future of AI on Ethereum?
So they haven't developed these power tools, but the open source community effectively is. And OpenClaw can be powered by, am I correct? basically any AI LLM that you want. So you'd wire this up to cloud and use sort of cloud APIs, or you could do your Kimi or something open source and run it locally. But it has complete access to whatever you give it access to.
And there's an entire community kind of enhancing it with skills and developing on top of it. And basically, it's the first thing It's the first time we've seen independent AI, personal assistant types of entities that have complete access to everything a human being might be able to access. Is that right?
I would say that there were AI guys back a year ago that were doing this. But I think this is the first time it's like accessible to normies. Like, I don't know anything about AI. I'm a blockchain coder and I can just go get this thing and run it on a computer, paste in a couple API keys and the thing's starting to talk to me. And then at that point, I can turn it loose on a bunch of things.
So I would say this is the first time it's accessible for normies to just like have an AI assistant that has full control.
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