Viewpoint: AI agents may betray the core commitment of the encryption world, as their "black box" systems cannot be verified and scrutinized.

On October 20, Forbes reported that by 2025, autonomous AI entities have become one of the hottest narratives in the cryptocurrency industry, expanding overnight from an experimental novelty concept to a market valued at $13.5 billion. An AI entity named “Truth Terminal” convinced well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to donate $50,000, which propelled the market capitalization of the GOAT Token to $1.2 billion. Currently, there are over 11,000 AI entities operating solely on the Virtuals Protocol platform, executing trades and managing portfolios with minimal human intervention. However, there is a problem that few are willing to face. These AI entities were originally intended to enhance the efficiency of DeFi, yet they themselves are often highly centralized. The vast majority rely on closed-source models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, creating a concentrated monopoly at the expense of user data and transaction flow. In an industry built on transparency, AI entities simultaneously represent the most market-demanded products in the crypto world to date—and the most severe ideological contradictions. The question is no longer whether AI entities will reshape the cryptocurrency industry, but rather—they already are. Security researchers warn that many AI entities deployed on blockchain networks use unaudited smart contracts, and most delegate decision-making processes to centralized AI services. When an entity executes a DeFi strategy worth $100,000, the real decision-making reasoning actually occurs on the servers of OpenAI or Google—these “black box” systems cannot be reviewed or verified by anyone.