Bank of AI and the PKUBlockchain Association at Peking University have released the first comprehensive research report on the Web4.0 "agent economy," titled Web4.0: When AI Agents Become Economic Entities — Infrastructure, Market Landscape, and Investment Outlook. The report points out that as AI systems evolve from "assistive tools" to autonomous entities capable of holding assets, generating income, and conducting transactions, the infrastructure for digital currencies needs to adapt to these changes.
Within this framework, AI agents are viewed as on-chain economic participants that must possess functionalities such as sending and receiving payments, proving identity, invoking off-chain tools, and establishing verifiable records, similar to wallets or companies managed by humans. To fill this gap, the authors highlight three layers of infrastructure that are currently lacking or immature: the x402 payment protocol for stablecoin transfers, the ERC-8004 as the on-chain "identity card" for agents, and the MCP (Model Context Protocol) standard for tool invocation.
Bank of AI utilizes this report to showcase its own technology stack, claiming to integrate "five core components into a unified agent financial operating system," transforming these protocols from concepts into actual products. Additionally, external research on the agent market — including FinChain's proposed "agent real asset stack" — predicts that by 2030, AI agents will manage "tens of trillions" of assets and business flows, further emphasizing why payment and identity infrastructure is currently in focus.
The report emphasizes that Tron is the current settlement backbone of the agent-driven Web4.0. It notes that Tron processes over $22 billion in stablecoin transactions daily and holds approximately $86 billion in USDT, showcasing the scale and cost characteristics suitable for AI agents to conduct "high-frequency micro-settlements."
Independent analyses also support this view: Nansen and other researchers have found that TRON's daily stablecoin transfers often exceed $21 billion, with USDT supply surpassing $80 billion and approximately 2 to 2.2 million stablecoin transactions occurring daily. Earlier reports indicated that Tron has surpassed Ethereum in USDT supply, with on-chain data suggesting its USDT circulation will exceed $73.8 billion by 2025, subsequently breaking through $80 billion, becoming the primary settlement layer for Tether's regular dollar transfers.