The next major opportunity for several altcoins could come from the convergence of tokenization and AI-driven agentic payments. According to one analyst, while the sector is still early, blockchain projects are already building infrastructure for machines to transact and settle payments. Moreover, they are developing ways for machines to access services without human intervention.
Chainlink Leads the Infrastructure Race
Chainlink (LINK) is one of the strongest positioned projects because it sits between blockchains, institutions and applications. Its infrastructure covers data, cross-chain connectivity and compliance. Furthermore, its Runtime Environment is being developed for use cases including AI agents and tokenization. Chainlink has also expanded institutional tokenization partnerships. For instance, it is involved in work with Amundi, Visa and Canton.
Its CCIP could become particularly important if AI agents need to move assets across different blockchains.
What could push altcoins higher:
More institutional tokenization
Wider CCIP adoption
Growth in AI-agent payments
Greater use of Chainlink’s compliance and automation infrastructure
XRP and Stellar Target Machine-to-Machine Payments
XRP and Stellar (XLM) are positioned primarily around fast and inexpensive settlement.
Ripple has integrated the XRP Ledger and RLUSD with the x402 payment standard. This allows AI agents to make autonomous on-chain payments. Agentic transactions on XRPL recently crossed 1 million. RippleX expects the figure could reach 10 million, and potentially 100 million, as adoption develops.
Stellar, meanwhile, is already being used as a payment and tokenization network. This gives XLM exposure to both sides of the emerging trend.
NEAR, ASI and Render Target the Agent Economy
Next up on the altcoins list is, NEAR Protocol (NEAR) stands out for its chain-abstraction technology and AI-agent marketplace, allowing agents to coordinate tasks across different networks.
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET/ASI) is targeting the marketplace side, with agents designed to communicate and interact autonomously.
Render (RENDER) takes a different route by providing decentralized computing resources. As AI agents require increasing amounts of processing power, GPU infrastructure could become another major part of the ecosystem.
Quant, Avalanche, Aethir and Sui Add More Infrastructure
Quant (QNT) is focused on connecting blockchain-based payments with traditional financial infrastructure. Meanwhile, Avalanche (AVAX) is combining its tokenization ecosystem with AI infrastructure through its partnership with Aether.
Aethir is one of the smaller projects in the group but focuses heavily on GPU compute. It has around 400,000 GPUs available for AI workloads and approximately $41 million in annual recurring revenue, according to the source material.
Sui (SUI) is also preparing for AI-driven transaction growth, having stress-tested its network at more than 6 million concurrent transactions.