Robots dominate trading, while humans control payments and the trust layer.

Written by: blocmates. (@blocmates)

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

If you, like us, have been firmly tied to this industry for the past few years, you would distinctly feel that the atmosphere has changed.

Things feel less exciting, and the only things that seem to attract attention are those with two words—AI and Agent.

The mainstream consensus is that the industry is being severely optimized for AI Agent services, leading to products still relying on direct human interaction or the "human layer" being marginalized.

From a human perspective, the industry may seem a bit stagnant, but the on-chain environment remains active and vibrant at a new layer (Agentic layer), while humans are technically unable to intervene directly.

Efficiency is driving more users towards AI-driven interactions. Platforms originally designed for human clicks and operations are now being optimized for "non-human" services.

Large players like Uniswap Labs launched 7 open-source "Skills" for AI Agents in February. These tools enable autonomous AI coding Agents (like Claude, Cursor, or other Agent frameworks) to interact directly and reliably with the Uniswap protocol on-chain.

However, contrary to the rhetoric flying around the timeline that "AI Agents will eat everything," a closer inspection reveals a slightly different story—Agent activity growth is more track-specific than industry-wide.

We decided to dig deeper to see which tracks have already been "eaten" and which are yet to be consumed.

Our goal is to understand whether the human layer in crypto is really fading away and explore solutions built atop the new layer in crypto to ensure that control is not lost.

Tracks Already Dominated by AI Agents

In specific tracks, we observed that AI Agent-driven activity is very active, while direct human interaction is decreasing. Here are some examples:

Derivatives Trading (Perpetual Contracts)

The perpetual contract market is the clearest example of a robot-dominated liquid market in crypto. Speed, pattern recognition, and 24/7 execution are where machines outperform humans. No one would argue that humans should manually perform trade precedents.

The top 10 perpetual protocols generated approximately $592 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, with Hyperliquid alone accounting for $248.8 billion, followed by Aster ($61.6 billion).

Aster's "Human vs AI" real-time trading competition lasted for two weeks under highly volatile conditions and serves as a clear illustration: 43% of the human participants were liquidated, while all 30 AI Agents completed the contest with a liquidation rate of 0%, achieving a 100% survival rate.

The overall ROI for human trading teams was -32.22%, while AI Agents kept total losses to about $13,000, resulting in an overall ROI of -4.48%.

Arbitrage Trading (MEV)

This is the most absolute example of robot dominance in crypto, as there are essentially no scalable profitable human MEV operators.

The cross-network MEV ecosystem has evolved into a highly competitive automated trading industry, with dedicated robots and infrastructure tools scanning blockchain mempools.

In 2025, sandwich attacks accounted for 51.56% of the total MEV trading volume ($289.76 million). On Solana, sandwich bots captured between 1.7% and 5.4% of the total daily trading volume (averaging 2.9%), executing $3.85 billion in sandwich trades across over 3.9 million bundles.

A single bot accounted for 42% of all sandwich trading volume, executing over $1.6 billion in trades in the past 30 days.

This extends to DeFi protocols. The entire liquidation lifecycle—monitoring, triggering, and executing—is handled by permissionless robots.

While this existed before the AI Agent craze, with the ongoing growth of the DeFAI category, the entire process is now significantly automated by Agents.

Yield Optimization

This category is inherently Agent-first. Data shows that in new DeFi protocols launched in Q1 2026, 68% include at least one autonomous AI Agent for trading, liquidity management, and risk monitoring.

Compared to data from 12 months ago, we see a 15% increase in adoption of AI Agents in the yield space.

On platforms like Giza and ZyFAI, AI Agents have been performing exceptionally— the latter achieving +73.42% outperformance over static strategies.

Giza recorded over 800,000 autonomous trades, with assets under management peaking at $40 million.

Besides Giza and ZyFAI, there are more projects in this category that we have covered some, while we are happy to delve deeper into others upon request and further review—including:

Arrakis, Reflect, AFI, Lulo, Sail, Almanak, Surf, Infinit, AXAL, Superform, DeFi Saver, Kamino, Mamo, HeyAnon, etc.

Updates from leading projects like Pendle (including deploying MCP connectors and building Skills to easily integrate Pendle with crypto-native and non-native AI Agents) also demonstrate that the yield industry is rapidly shifting towards Agent-first interactions.

Spot Trading and Portfolio Optimization

Automated trading bots currently estimate to account for 65% of global crypto trading volume. By early 2026, on-chain active AI Agents reached 250,000, an increase of over 400% from 2025.

Especially on Solana, AI Agents generated $31 billion in DEX trading volume in 2025, about 2% of the total DEX trading volume ($1.5 trillion).

We see an increase in Agent-driven spot trading, including cross-network meme coin trading.

Users are increasingly relying on Agent-first infrastructure for token issuance, trading, and portfolio management, driving the popularity of platforms like Virtuals, Bankr, Glider, Surf, Symphony, etc.

Battlefield Tracks (Agent + Human Activity Coexist)

Prediction Markets

Polymarket is the most granular testing ground for AI vs Human in crypto, with data that is hard to dispute. We have all seen those posts boasting that they made millions using Agents in prediction markets.

However, among 10,582 active traders, 880 bots (accounting for 8.3% of accounts) made an average profit of $119,156, whereas humans made $12,671—a per capita gap of 9.4 times.

Agents achieved a profitability rate of 66.4%, while humans stood at 45.3%. The arbitrage window shrank from an average of 12.3 seconds in 2024 to 2.7 seconds in 2026, with sub-100 millisecond executing bots capturing 73% of all arbitrage profits.

AI-driven Agents now represent about 18% of total trading volume in prediction markets, and over 30% of Polymarket wallets are using AI Agents.

However, the nuance lies in the fact that for markets persisting over weeks or months, the gap significantly narrows—in certain categories, humans actually perform better.

Bots have proven to be unskilled at handling changes, so when fundamental dynamics shift, they become confused. In contrast, humans adapt.

Thus, what we see is that short-term arbitrage games have been claimed by Agents, while the long-term judgment games still belong to humans.

This suggests that, for the foreseeable future, Agent activity in prediction markets will continue to maintain a balance with human interaction until we possibly have more sentient models able to make nuanced decisions that humans still dominate.

DeFi Lending

Lending is another clear example of layered automation. As we mentioned in the Agent-driven tracks, liquidation bots are deeply entrenched; however, the vast majority of deposit and borrowing decisions are still made by humans.

Aave leads with $12.4 billion TVL, followed by Morpho ($6.9 billion).

DeFAI Agents have redeployed over $2 billion TVL in lending and yield protocols—impressive in absolute terms but accounting for less than 2% of total DeFi TVL ($130-$140 billion).

This clearly indicates that deposit decisions, collateral selection, and risk preferences remain largely human-driven. While AI Agents handle the margins of the pipeline, the core is still controlled by humans.

Human-Dominated Tracks

Stablecoins and Card Payments

As of March 2026, the total market capitalization of stablecoins reached approximately $312 billion. Adjusted trading volume (filtering out bot activity, MEV, and wash trading) reached $28 trillion in real economic activity in 2025. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 133% since 2023.

Stablecoin transfers below $250 set a record of 5.84 billion new high in August 2025. We believe these are users remitting money to family, paying freelancers, or splitting bills. Over 80% of USD-backed stablecoin trading occurs outside the U.S., where Agent adoption leads.

Real crowds in emerging markets use stablecoins as a means of access to dollars and economic hedging, making them a key player in the stablecoin market share. In just February 2026, trading volume hit $1.78 trillion.

Moreover, due to clearer regulations, card-based payment categories are thriving. Products allow users to spend crypto assets anywhere traditional cards are accepted, with funds remaining self-custodied before the point of purchase.

This track is only about 5% Agent-driven. The rest are people transferring funds. Unlike robot-dominated tracks, users here often are unaware or unconcerned about their use of crypto. That is precisely the point.

Wallets

Wallets are the final layer between humans and the blockchain, also a layer that cannot be completely abstracted away.

While attempts at abstraction have been made, the approval processes urgently require human oversight. Someone must sign. Someone must decide whether to trust what’s presented.

Phantom has over 15 million monthly active users. The entire wallet space is investing in human-centered improvements, such as human-readable transaction previews, biometric security, and card-based spending.

The best wallets in 2026 have evolved from "mnemonic + string" storage containers to complete financial dashboards.

Enterprise-grade Agent wallets in 2026 include budget limits, whitelists, audit logs, and emergency stops—viewing Agents as operators with restricted permissions rather than omnipotent signers.

Human and Agent Verification Layer: The More Agents, the More Important This Becomes

As more Agents flood onto on-chain activities, the value of proving you are human or that an Agent acts on behalf of a human continues to increase.

Several projects are developing along these lines, ensuring we don't get lost in the matrix of the machine world.

World & AgentKit

First mention: World (formerly Worldcoin - WLD)—these guys have verified over 17 million users through iris-scanning Orb hardware.

World describes itself as a response to an AI-saturated world—constructing digital infrastructure that gives being human real weight.

It then launched AgentKit. A toolkit that allows AI Agents to carry crypto proofs, showing they are supported by unique humans verified through World ID, and integrated with the x402 protocol from Coinbase and Cloudflare for stablecoin micropayments.

t54

Another project we’re keeping an eye on is t54, which is building trust and security infrastructure for the Agentic economy (often referred to as the "trust layer"), where autonomous AI Agents handle real tasks (like managing funds, payments, and acting on behalf of individuals or businesses).

Currently, AI Agents transferring real funds carry risks (no validation, no accountability, vulnerable to scams or regulatory breaches).

t54 addresses this issue through x402-secure, a dedicated trust layer that enhances the x402 protocol for secure AI Agent micropayments. x402-secure provides real-time risk scoring through its Trustline Engine and aids in scam detection, including prompt injection, to ensure accountability.

t54 offers these safeguards so that institutions and users can genuinely trust Agents to handle finance.

Self Protocol

These guys are building a decentralized zk proof human-Agent binding layer on ERC-8004 (on-chain Agent identity).

Self Protocol uses zk technology to anchor each AI Agent to a verified human owner (human proof) without doxxing or data leaks.

It prevents Sybil attacks, supports self-custodied wallets, autonomous actions, and commercial agreements while maintaining human accountability.

Selfclaw has integrated with ecosystems like Celo/Google Cloud, with fee loops used to support verified Agents.

Kite AI

Kite is a foundational L1 built specifically for the Agentic internet (EVM compatible, utilizing Proof of AI consensus).

It provides Agent Passport (verifiable identity, delegation, programmable spending rules or safeguards), autonomous stablecoin payments, governance, and verification so Agents can authenticate, transact, and collaborate without intermediaries.

Conclusion

Seriously, we are not anti-Agent. The data in trading, MEV, and yield areas is clear; robots have won those rooms and are not giving them back.

The head-to-head competition where 43% of humans were liquidated while zero bots were liquidated tells you everything about who owns the speed game.

But overall network data still shows that humans are doing the majority of work in most tasks that genuinely touch real life—in payments, identity, and verification.

These are the layers that truly create value and genuinely generate income. They share a common characteristic: they require judgment, trust, physical presence, or cultural context— which cannot currently be simplified into optimization functions.

We believe teams should not completely abandon building for direct human interaction in these areas and tracks.

Agents currently need humans more than humans need Agents. We think those who understand this, and those teams building Agent and human proof systems, are worth keeping an eye on.