According to Woofun AI, the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain is reshaping the underlying logic of the digital economy. The latest report released by Grayscale reveals the explosive power of this trend: in September, the overall increase in the AI-related cryptocurrency sector reached 54%. This growth rate is not only more than double the 24% increase in the overall cryptocurrency market during the same period, but also marks capital's repricing of the value of decentralized AI infrastructure. By providing machine-to-machine payments, decentralized authentication, private computing, and verifiable recording functions, public blockchains are making up for the lack of centralized artificial intelligence systems based on autonomous software agent operation, and laying the foundation for the upcoming agent economy.
Despite high market sentiment, the actual volume of the sector is still in its early stages. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, even after strong performance in September, Grayscale estimated the total size of the field related to artificial intelligence at only about $15 billion, making it the smallest of the six major cryptocurrency sectors tracked by the agency.
However, this limited scale has left huge room for blockchain-based artificial intelligence applications to occupy a considerable market share after being more widely adopted. Investors' attention to AI infrastructure increased significantly in September, driving a number of leading project tokens to rise sharply: $NEAR rose by an astonishing 183%, $TAO rose 37%, $WLD rose 47%, and $VVV also recorded a 70% increase. The sharp fluctuations in this data reflect that the market is differentiating pricing for different types of AI blockchain projects.
An in-depth analysis of the business logic of these four leading projects reveals that their technical paths are unique and complementary. NEAR focuses on infrastructure construction in the field of intelligent commerce. It aims to enable autonomous software to seamlessly interact with various applications and complete transactions, thereby opening up the closed economic loop of AI agents. Bittensor, on the other hand, uses a decentralized architecture to develop artificial intelligence and build a distributed AI computing power market by connecting private networks focused on inference, data, and computing resources. World is committed to solving the increasingly pressing problem of digital verification of human identity. As AI-generated content and autonomous agents become popular on the Internet, distinguishing between human and machine identities is critical.
At the same time, Venice launched an AI chatbot with privacy protection as the core design concept, which allows users to interact with the robot without storing questions or replies, solving the trust problem between data privacy and AI interaction. These different development paths show that the integration of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence is not limited to a single application category, but is being carried out at multiple levels.
Looking ahead, as autonomous agents can complete more complex tasks without direct human intervention, the importance of functions such as payment, authentication, calculation, and data verification will further increase. Grayscale anticipates that within the next five years, the AI-related cryptocurrency sector may launch one or more important projects with industry influence.
Although the report highlights that this market is still small and developing, its core idea is clear: autonomous agents require infrastructure that can operate in an open digital environment. Blockchain already has a programmable settlement mechanism, transparent recording system, and token-based incentive mechanism, providing developers with the necessary tools to build a system that allows software to independently trade and coordinate.
This structural advantage makes blockchain a key underlying protocol supporting the development of the agent economy.