AI-Driven Payment Infrastructure: Leading the Encryption Industry into a New Wave of Innovation

Introduction

For nearly a century, the basic unit of economic activity has been humans. However, the rise of AI technology is reshaping this landscape, transforming machines from passive tools into "active economic entities" - AI Agents.

In addition, Tether recently announced the integration of USDT into the BTC ecosystem, covering its base layer and the Lightning Network. Behind these trends, a transformation is brewing: AI Agent-driven payment infrastructure is driving the crypto industry into a new wave of innovation with disruptive momentum. From the consensus layer of BTC to the execution layer of smart contracts, and now to the AI-driven application layer, the crypto industry is likely to welcome a paradigm shift of AI + Pay Fi + BTC Infra, forcing Web2 to self-reform into Web3—the future of mass adoption is gradually becoming a reality.

1. Stablecoin: The cornerstone of a new era in global payments

The programmability, cross-border practicality, and increasingly clear regulatory framework of stablecoins are expected to make them the standard settlement currency for global payments. As a more friendly policy environment towards cryptocurrency takes shape, the application scenarios for stablecoins will gradually expand. In the next 10 years, stablecoin payments may present the following development vision:

Short-term (1-3 years): Stablecoins will dominate cross-border remittances, providing a faster and cheaper alternative to traditional systems. Payment cards related to encryption will simplify consumption, building a bridge between on-chain wealth and real-world transactions.

Medium term (3-7 years): Companies will increasingly adopt stablecoin payments due to the low fees, instant settlement, and programmability of stablecoins. Businesses will be able to seamlessly convert between encryption and fiat currency, providing customers with a dual-track payment option.

Long term (7 years and above): Stablecoins will become mainstream payment methods, widely accepted for daily transactions and even tax payments, completely overturning traditional financial infrastructure.

In addition to payment convenience, stablecoins also play a positive role in other areas. They provide entrepreneurs with a platform that makes it easier to develop new payment products without intermediaries, minimum balances, or proprietary SDKs. It is estimated that if medium and large enterprises can use stablecoin solutions in transactions, corporate profits may increase by 2%. Moreover, some countries have attempted to use stablecoins for international trade to circumvent traditional settlement systems. An increasing number of cases indicate that stablecoins are gradually approaching their optimal market positioning—as the most economical and fastest global payment method.

2.Next Level: AI Agents become a new user experience layer for future applications.

Today, AI is no longer just performing single tasks, but is becoming an independent market participant. This change involves AI-driven financial trading, smart supply chain management, and generative AI providing services for creators, developers, and businesses. Furthermore, AI agents are even capable of autonomously negotiating, trading, settling, and optimizing their own resource utilization.

At the end of last year, we have already seen AI Agents redefine the landscape of decentralized applications. Some AI Agents can autonomously use tokens for trading, generate content, and even manage their own encryption wallets and assets. This evolution of capability has spawned innovative concepts in the encryption field, such as certain protocols allowing for investment in various AI Agents.

The continuously evolving capabilities of AI Agents, combined with convenient issuance platforms, have opened up significant market opportunities for the concept of AI Agent + Crypto. AI is becoming an active participant in the on-chain ecosystem, driving the transition of blockchain applications from being tool-based to being ecosystem-oriented.

In the future, AI will become the user experience layer of blockchain technology, connecting the application layer and blockchain infrastructure. For example, AI can proactively recommend and execute on-chain DeFi operations based on users' intentions and preferences, combined with real-time market information. Users can enjoy optimized financial services without needing to understand complex technical details. In daily life, AI personal finance assistants may autonomously manage taxes, insurance, and rental income and expenses, dynamically optimize investment portfolios, and even automatically execute trades based on market changes.

To ensure security, Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) have become critical infrastructure, isolating the computing environment to ensure that the behavior of AI Agents fully adheres to predefined logic and is not subject to external manipulation. AI Agents operating in TEE can earn income through content creation while maintaining absolute control over their asset keys. Moreover, AI can also operate decentralized physical infrastructure nodes or validate data, becoming a core executor in distributed systems.

The workflows and application scenarios of these AI Agents are painting a brand new picture of the "machine economy": from gamers to infrastructure managers, from content creators to financial strategists, AI Agents will become the core driving force of the on-chain ecosystem.

3. The Dilemma of the Existing Payment System: The Invisible Shackles of the AI Economy

AI agents will partially replace humans, becoming independent participants in the market and forming an important force. However, this machine economy revolution faces challenges, one of the core issues being "payment." The realization of the AI revolution requires an efficient, secure, and decentralized payment network built using blockchain technology, providing AI agents with seamless economic interaction capabilities.

3.1 Economic Imbalance of Micro-Payments

Imagine an AI agent running high-frequency trading strategies, completing 1,000 trades per second, each with an amount of only $0.0001. If traditional payment networks are used, each transaction incurs a fee of at least $0.30, meaning that for each $0.0001 transaction, a fee 3,000 times greater is paid. This cost structure makes the AI economy unfeasible on existing payment systems.

The Fatal Flaw of Settlement Speed 3.2

For AI agents, trading is a continuous flow process. However, the settlement methods of traditional payment networks are extremely lagging.

• Credit card payments typically take 1-3 days to settle.
• International transfers may take 2-5 days.
• Some cryptocurrency payments take an average of 10 minutes or even longer.

The AI economy requires millisecond-level settlement, which the existing payment systems clearly cannot meet.

Limitations of Centralized Architecture 3.3

AI agents are essentially global and not limited by geographical boundaries. However, traditional payment systems are mired in issues such as bank accounts, fiat currency compliance, and regional payment regulations.

• Most payment systems require parties to have bank accounts, but AI agents cannot open accounts like humans.
• Existing payment systems rely on a few financial institutions for approval, and AI-mediated transactions may be rejected at any time due to regulatory or compliance issues.
• Cross-border transactions with AI agents face cumbersome compliance requirements, increasing operational costs and complexity.

If the AI economy must rely on the existing payment system, it will be constrained by artificially set limits and will not be able to truly unleash its potential.

3.4 Five Core Requirements of the AI Economic Payment System

Considering the possible operational characteristics and use cases of AI Agents, the future payment system for AI services must possess the following five core capabilities:

• Micropayment capability: Supports transactions of extremely small amounts with transaction fees that are very low, even approaching zero.
• Millisecond-level transaction settlement: able to settle in real time, rather than waiting for minutes or even days.
• Decentralization and anti-censorship: Support AI agents for autonomous trading without relying on centralized financial institutions.
• Global availability: Supports cross-border transactions, avoiding reliance on bank accounts.
• Intelligent Payment Protocol: Seamless interaction with AI agents, supporting features such as automatic settlement, smart trade routing, and liquidity optimization.

4. The Hopes and Limitations of Blockchain Payment

The rise of blockchain technology has brought hope to the AI economy. However, mainstream blockchains still face the following issues:

4.1 The high cost of a certain well-known online payment

The network is a major infrastructure for decentralized finance, but high transaction costs make it difficult for the AI economy to adopt. During network congestion, simple transactions may incur fees of $10 to $50, the transaction throughput is limited, and the processing speed is slow, making it hard to support the high-frequency trading demands of AI agents.

4.2 The speed and centralization issues of other high-performance public chains

Some high-performance public chains offer faster transaction processing capabilities, but often have a higher degree of centralization, posing security risks. Some public chains have experienced multiple outages, affecting transaction stability. In addition, most public chains rely on a limited number of validating nodes, which may impact the decentralized nature of the payment system.

4.3 Scalability Bottlenecks of Certain Mainstream Encryption Currency Networks

As the world's safest and most decentralized blockchain, its security is unmatched, but its payment capability is limited. The network's transaction throughput is extremely low (only 7 transactions per second), and when faced with high transaction volumes, fees soar, resulting in significant fluctuations in transaction costs, making it unsuitable for small payments by AI agents.

4.4 Lightning Network - A New Stage for Stablecoin Payments

The Lightning Network, as the first layer two scaling solution for a certain encryption currency, not only relies on the security of its network but also achieves instant, low-cost, and infinitely scalable transaction capabilities through bidirectional payment channels. This technological approach is highly suited for small-value, high-frequency payment scenarios, while also aligning with the ideals of fundamentalist encryption enthusiasts. Currently, the Lightning Network has over 15,000 nodes and more than 50,000 channels, showcasing strong ecological potential.

However, the Lightning Network is not without its flaws. Before a certain protocol emerged, the Lightning Network only supported specific cryptocurrencies as payment currencies, and its application scenarios were limited. At this point, the importance of stablecoins is self-evident: only currencies with stable value can be widely accepted and used in everyday payment scenarios.

A stablecoin issued by a certain company is now the leader in the encryption world. As of now, its total issuance has exceeded 140 billion USD, more than twice that of the second-largest issued stablecoin. The company has integrated its stablecoin into the Lightning Network, which is significant. This action marks an acknowledgment of the security and usability of public chains and brings real on-chain users and fee income to the Lightning Network. It also means that after years of development, the Lightning Network has finally entered an era where it can truly take effect.

Everything is ready, just waiting for the right moment.

The explosive growth of AI Agents is giving rise to a trillion-level market for machine economy, but traditional payment networks and existing blockchain solutions struggle to meet its demands. The integration of stablecoins into the Lightning Network seems to provide a key piece for the industry—a near-zero-cost, censorship-resistant payment channel, combined with the liquidity of stablecoins, perfectly matching the micropayment and real-time transaction scenarios of AI agents.

Therefore, a new payment solution has emerged. It is not just a simple overlay of technology stacks, but rather a "financial operating system" tailored for the AI economy, allowing the AI economy to truly break free from payment limitations and move towards a future of autonomous interaction. The future of the AI economy does not need to wait—payment is efficiency, and transactions are intelligence.

6. New Payment Systems: The Ultimate Integration of Lightning Network, Stablecoins, and AI Agents

6.1 Four-layer Technical Architecture

The architecture of the new payment system can be divided into four core levels, which work together to enable AI agents to make payments freely and efficiently.

a. Settlement Layer

• Underlying Network: a certain encryption currency network (L1) + Lightning Network (L2)
• Core Advantages:
  • Security: Relying on a powerful consensus mechanism and a decentralized network (over 57,000 nodes worldwide)
  • Efficiency: Millisecond-level transaction confirmation, fees approaching zero, solving the pain point of AI high-frequency micropayments.

b. Payment Layer

• Multi-chain support: Compatible with multiple mainstream public chains, AI agents can freely choose the optimal chain.
• Stablecoin Integration: The native stablecoin issued by the system circulates as a payment currency on the Lightning Network through specific protocols with other mainstream stablecoins.

c. Programmable Layer

• AI Native Protocol: Empowering AI Agents with Autonomous Decision-Making Capabilities
• Dynamic Routing: Real-time analysis of transaction fees and network congestion, automatically switching payment paths.
• Automated micropayments: on-demand settlement (e.g., pay $0.0001 for each API call), no manual intervention required.
• Liquidity Management: AI agents can dynamically allocate funds to liquidity pools to optimize payment efficiency.

d. Governance Layer

• DAO mechanism: jointly governed by token holders to decide on protocol upgrades, fee distribution, etc.
• Incentive