Grayscale believes AI will create three new sources of demand for public blockchains: programmable finance, digital identity, and decentralized AI.

Grayscale’s research arm has just released a report stating that the increasingly widespread adoption of artificial intelligence could become one of the main drivers of demand for public blockchain networks—especially in financial transactions, verifiable data storage, and the development of decentralized AI networks. According to Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale and the report’s author, this demand will focus on three key use cases.

First is programmable financial infrastructure. AI agents will need programmable crypto-asset wallets that enable self-custody and the ability to use funds without intermediaries, so they can autonomously carry out financial transactions.

Grayscale says this trend will drive demand for micro-payments, instant cross-border payments, automated transactions, and risk-management systems, in which public blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Solana are expected to play a core infrastructure role.

Digital identity and decentralized AI ecosystems

Second is the need for verifiable profiles for computation activities, digital identity, and reputation. As companies increasingly entrust more processes to AI services, the need to verify the provenance of decisions made by AI will grow. At the same time, organizations need a trusted digital identity framework capable of distinguishing humans from AI agents without disclosing users’ identities.

Pandl believes that public blockchain networks and the services built on top of them, including World, can fulfill this function before autonomous agents carry out financial transactions or other high-risk transactions.

Third is the development of decentralized AI ecosystems. Pandl notes that AI development activity is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies that control computing resources, capital, and governance mechanisms. He cites decentralized networks such as Bittensor as an alternative—allowing anyone to contribute to AI development, access shared infrastructure, and own benefits within the ecosystem, thereby reducing dependence on centralized developers.

Grayscale’s report emphasizes that the expansion of AI will not reduce the importance of public blockchain networks; rather, it will create new sources of demand. According to Pandl, as AI systems become more autonomous, traditional digital infrastructure will become increasingly unable to meet the arising requirements, while public blockchain networks can address this need through open architecture, transparency, and the absence of a central governing authority.

Grayscale’s view also aligns with the perspectives of several other organizations in the industry. Previously, analysts at Visa and Artemis believed that traditional card networks were not suitable for processing micro-payments between AI agents, while analysts at Coinbase said that crypto-asset infrastructure, especially stablecoins, is becoming the foundation of digital payments in a forming agent-based economy.