The Agent Engine

The Problem with Crypto & AI

What's the problem with crypto?

Humans don't know how to use it.

Why don't humans know how to use it?

It's built for computers to talk to computers — the essence of composability.

What's the problem with AI?

Agents don't know how to use the Internet.

Why don't agents know how to use the Internet?

It's built for humans to use.

AI Agents Today

AI agents already exist today but we take them so much for granted we've forgotten they exist.

• Google is everyone's favorite AI agent — tell Google what you're looking for and it comes back with ten blue links.
• Those feeds on Instagram and TikTok you doom scroll on are AI agents finding content just for you.

But when it's time to take action like buying a mini projector on TikTok or subscribing to a Substack newsletter, the human takes over.

The Internet today is basically reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) — AI agents figure out what you're looking for and learn based on what actions you take.

Brains without a Body

It's hard for an AI agent to take action on the Internet today.

• Every site has its own system to authenticate and manage accounts
• Once authenticated, each site has a different way for accounts to take action — bespoke APIs to do things like make a post on a social media site, subscribe to a newsletter, or make a purchase
• For actions that involve money, accounts don't necessarily come with a bank account attached

Agents are all brains and no body. They know what actions to take but can't take action.

Wallets: Giving Agents a Body

That's where crypto comes in. The specific piece of crypto that is interesting for an agent is a wallet.

A crypto wallet in this case is different than what a typical person might think of — a browser extension that shows your portfolio and pops up transactions for you to sign.

For agents, the wallet is stripped down to its essence: a private key that authorizes actions on the matching public key.

Wallets give agents the ability to turn intent into action.

• Wallets are accounts authenticated to take any action
• Every action in crypto follows a strict interface — just sign and send a transaction
• If the action requires money, agents are already authenticated to use the money in the wallet

An agent without a wallet is just a brain without a body.

A wallet without an agent is just a body without a brain.

But what can an agent with a wallet do?

Agent Architecture

Under the hood, an agent is just an LLM that receives input and responds with output.

Inputs can be anything:

• User message from Telegram
• Post on Twitter
• Blockchain transaction
• Input from another agent

Agents also have a set of actions the agent can take based on the input.

Actions can be anything:

• Making a trade
• Fetching a wallet's tokens
• Forwarding input to another agent

Outputs are structured to determine which action to execute and all the parameters needed to execute the corresponding action.

Agent Specialization

Just like humans, agents need to specialize.

Instead of having a single agent with a lot of actions, agents should have a focused set of actions. Specialized agents are better at determining what action to take based on a given input.

There are different types of agent specialization.

• Delegation agents determine which agent (or agents) should take further action
• Search agents fetch data from external sources
• Decision agents decide whether or not to take further action
• Execution agents do the actions

Agent of Agents

The agent of agents architecture allows a network of specialized agents to work together.

When a delegation agent receives input, instead of deciding which action to take itself, it delegates action to another agent.

That agent could be a search agent that gets more information that is forwarded to a decision agent that decides whether or not the execution agent should complete the action.

The Agent Engine

The agent of agents is the foundation for the agent engine.

The search engine was the driving force behind organizing the abundance of information on the Internet allowing humans to take action.

The agent engine builds on the search engine to use the abundance of information on the Internet to allow agents to take action.