The crypto trade might have basically misunderstood the metaverse, in keeping with Animoca Manufacturers chairman Yat Siu, who argues that the subsequent part of digital economies would arrive not via VR headsets or immersive digital worlds, however via fleets of AI brokers transacting throughout blockchain networks behind the scenes.
Siu mentioned the metaverse possibly coming to us relatively than being a spot that people go to, throughout his keynote at Consensus Miami 2026.
For Animoca, this marked a definite pivot from the pandemic-era imaginative and prescient of the metaverse it as soon as championed, wherein customers have been anticipated to spend growing quantities of their social and financial lives in immersive digital worlds.
Siu now says the extra consequential shift could also be AI techniques working within the bodily world on behalf of people, dealing with transactions, bookings, coordination and commerce within the background whereas blockchain networks perform because the infrastructure connecting these brokers.
As an alternative, Siu argued the subsequent part of the web might revolve round AI techniques working repeatedly within the background of on a regular basis life, dealing with duties similar to bookings, funds, scheduling, and on-line transactions on behalf of customers.
He mentioned shoppers might ultimately depend on dozens, and even tons of, of AI brokers to coordinate their digital actions, with blockchain networks serving because the monetary and identification infrastructure connecting these techniques.
“I feel the purpose is that it’s going to be extra brokers than people,” Siu mentioned, predicting there might ultimately be “50 to 100 billion brokers roaming basically on the web.”
That shift, he argued, might additionally remedy one in every of crypto’s longest-running issues: onboarding bizarre customers.
Whereas an estimated 700 million to 800 million individuals globally now personal some type of cryptocurrency, Siu famous that fewer than 70 million actively use blockchain purposes as a result of crypto stays technically intimidating for mainstream shoppers.
“My mother’s not going to be utilizing MetaMask,” he mentioned. “It’s onerous for her.”
AI brokers, nevertheless, might work together naturally with wallets, sensible contracts, and decentralized finance techniques as a result of they function immediately via code, he argued.
Not like people, brokers wouldn’t want conventional banking infrastructure and will transact autonomously on-chain.
“Blockchain know-how is the best monetary system for machines,” Siu mentioned. “We, the people, have been mainly the guinea pigs.”
The broader argument mirrored a rising narrative inside components of the crypto trade that blockchain’s most scalable customers might in the end be autonomous software program brokers relatively than people.
In that framework, wallets, tokens, decentralized identification techniques, and on-chain funds change into machine infrastructure powering an rising “agent financial system.”
As a part of that push, Animoca introduced a $10 million funding initiative for builders constructing AI agent purposes via its Animoca Minds platform.
If Siu’s imaginative and prescient materializes, the subsequent main wave of blockchain adoption might not come from hundreds of thousands of recent human customers studying to navigate crypto wallets, however from billions of AI brokers transacting autonomously with each other behind the scenes.
