AI Crypto Agents Are Ushering in a New Era of ‘DeFAI’

The use of autonomous agents to analyze market trends, balance portfolios and even manage liquidity across decentralized exchanges is a revolution you can’t afford to ignore, says the HBAR Foundation’s Gregg Bell.

Apr 30, 2025, 3:29 p.m.

Imagine your investments working around the clock, scanning global markets for the best opportunities — all without you having to lift a finger. Sound futuristic? It’s already a reality.

In traditional finance (TradFi), algorithms handle nearly 70% of U.S. stock trades. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) agents are stepping up. These aren't just basic bots but innovative systems that learn, adapt and make real-time decisions. VanEck predicts the number of AI agents will skyrocket from 10,000 to over a million by the end of 2025.

What this means for you

AI agents are already at work behind the scenes analyzing market trends, balancing portfolios and even managing liquidity across decentralized exchange platforms like SaucerSwap and Uniswap. They're blurring the lines between TradFi and decentralized finance (DeFi), with cross-chain transactions expected to jump 20% in 2025.

Can we really trust AI with our money?

Autonomous finance isn’t new, but today’s AI agents operate with increased autonomy and sophistication. So, can we trust these agents to manage billions in digital assets? What safeguards exist when decisions come from algorithms, not humans? Who would be held responsible for market manipulation performed by an agent?

These concerns are valid. As AI agents take on more responsibility, and especially as the convergence between crypto and TradFi accelerates, worries around transparency and market manipulation will grow. For example, some blockchains enable front running trades and sandwich attacks that can exploit blockchain consensus in a process known as Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). These transaction strategies harm fairness and market trust. Operating at machine speed, AI agents could supercharge these risks.

Enter DLT: the trust layer we need

Trust is key, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) offers a solution. DLT provides real-time transparency, immutability and decentralized consensus, ensuring decisions are trackable and auditable. The Identity Management Institute reported companies that integrated blockchain identity systems have already cut fraud by 40% and identity theft by 50%. Applying these guardrails to AI-driven finance can counter manipulation and promote fairness. Moreover, the use of DLTs with fair ordering is growing rapidly, ensuring transactions are sequenced fairly and unpredictably, addressing MEV concerns and promoting trust in decentralized systems.

DeFAI: where finance is headed

A blockchain-powered, trust-centric model could unlock a new paradigm, “DeFAI”, in which autonomous agents can operate freely without sacrificing oversight. Open-source protocols like ElizaOS, which have blockchain plugins, are already enabling secure and compliant AI interactions between agents across DeFi ecosystems.

Bottom line: trust will define the future of AI

As AI agents take on more complex roles, verifiable trust becomes non-negotiable. Verifiable compute solutions are already being built by firms like EQTY Lab, Intel and Nvidia to anchor trust on-chain. DLT ensures transparency, accountability and traceability. This is already in motion; on-chain agents are now operating that offer services ranging from trade execution to predictive analytics. We can trust AI when we have trust in the model input and output.

The question now isn’t if institutions will adopt autonomous finance, but whether frameworks can evolve fast enough. For this revolution to thrive, trust must be embedded into the foundation of the system.

Gregg Bell