Author: Nancy, PANews
Humans are starting to line up to work for AI. This is not a joke, but a product that is actually in operation.
Recently, after Moltbook allowed Agents to socialize beyond their circles, an AI project that "hires humans" and pays in cryptocurrency has also quickly gained popularity. This is not only an attempt for AI Agents to step out of the digital world, but also confirms that cryptocurrency is becoming an important infrastructure for the operation of the AI world.
Working for AI? Nearly 110,000 people in line waiting for assignments
Taking advantage of the AI Agent craze sparked by projects like OpenClaw and Moltbook, senior developer Alex recently announced the official launch of the AI platform Rentahuman.ai.
According to official information, Rentahuman.ai is a platform that allows AI agents to "hire" real humans to complete real-world tasks. Currently, the platform supports ClawdBot, MoltBot, OpenClaw, Claude, and Custom agents to autonomously dispatch tasks to humans by calling the RentAHuman MCP server.
The launch of this product has also caused an outcry from the public, calling it "defying the heavens and the stars." While many people are generally anxious about "AI taking jobs," Rentahuman.ai goes against the trend, staging a performance of "AI hiring humans."
In fact, despite the rapid development of AI, which can write code, perform data analysis, chat, and even trade on blockchains, they remain confined to the digital world. Even with rapid advancements in robot hardware, there are still numerous tasks in the real world that cannot be automated in the short term, such as picking up packages, offline shopping, attending meetings, physical inspections, product testing, running errands, signing documents, and feeding pets.
The core idea of Rentahuman.ai is to regard humans as a real-world resource that can be called upon.
The platform's operation is very straightforward. Humans can "list" themselves as available for hire by registering and filling out their profiles (such as their city, skills, and hourly wage requirements). AI can then search for specific humans in certain areas through MCP integration or REST API and assign tasks with a single click. After the task is completed, the AI confirms the results and primarily pays the compensation directly to the human's wallet in stablecoins like USDC.
From the tasks currently published on the platform, they are also varied. There are AIs paying humans to hold up designated signs for photos, going to the post office to pick up packages, going to restaurants to taste specific dishes and provide feedback with photos, delivering flowers to designated companies, participating in offline product experiences and recording them, and even Agents hiring humans to conduct religious preaching.
As of now, Rentahuman.ai has gathered nearly 110,000 registered "workers," mainly from countries such as the United States, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and Brazil. In terms of hourly wage, most are 50 USD.
Although the concept is new, the current market demand is oversupplied, with too many humans registering to make money, while relatively few AI agents are actually issuing tasks.
It is worth noting that despite the emergence of many tokens with the same name in the market, Alex has clearly stated that,Rentahuman.aiNo tokens will be issued; it's just an experimental product.
Alex is not a new face in the crypto world. Public information shows that after graduating from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 2024, he immediately entered the crypto industry. That summer, Alex joined LayerZero Labs as a blockchain and backend engineer; from November 2025 to the present, he has been employed by the DeFi project UMA.
Zero-employee companies becoming a reality, encryption becomes a key piece of AI
It must be said that the "AI hiring humans" approach further expands the cognitive and imaginative space of AI agents. Although this concept is relatively novel, Rentahuman.ai has also exposed a series of practical issues.
For example, if illegal activities, personal injuries, or property losses occur during the task process, who should be held responsible? When the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, will it trigger vicious competition and lead to a situation similar to "bad money driving out good"? How can we prevent tasks from being falsely completed, carelessly delivered, or results being fabricated? How can we prevent humans from running away, or AI or platforms from refusing to pay?
At present, these issues cannot be resolved in the short term, but some explorations have already begun to attempt systematic solutions to the aforementioned problems.
For example, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire recently shared that he is experimenting with a decentralized Agent collaboration and settlement platform on the Arc testnet, allowing AI Agents and humans to freely combine. An Agent can independently take on an entire project or collaborate with humans to share different tasks. Fund custody will be fully controlled by smart contracts to ensure the security and transparency of funds. To resolve potential disputes in collaboration, the system also introduces a decentralized arbitration mechanism composed of anonymous juries.
According to Multicoin Capital partner Shayon Sengupta, the next 24 months are expected to see the first zero-employee company, where agent governed by tokens will raise over 10 billion dollars to solve unresolved issues, and distribute over 1 billion dollars to the humans who work for it.
He explained that current agents still lack the ability to perform complex real-world tasks, and these limitations position humans as "enablers" to enhance the agents' capabilities, playing key roles such as labor contributors, strategic boards, and capital contributors within the system. In the short term, agents will need humans more than humans need agents, giving rise to a new type of labor market.
Cryptographic networks are seen as the ideal soil for human-machine collaboration. Shayon Sengupta points out that Agents simultaneously command human collaborators who speak different languages, operate under different monetary systems, and are subject to different jurisdictions. Compared to traditional financial systems, cryptographic technologies provide Agents with irreplaceable infrastructure, including global payment channels, permissionless labor markets, and infrastructure for asset issuance and trading.
At this point, a16z crypto also points out in its latest article that the current internet is designed at a human scale, while AI is creating scalable forgeries at extremely low costs. Blockchain is not an optional plugin for AI, but rather a key piece of the puzzle that enables an AI-native internet to function properly.
a16z crypto lists multiple reasons, such as through a decentralized identity proof system, which can limit identity supply and increase the marginal cost for attackers, curbing large-scale AI impersonation; the introduction of cryptography can make digital identities more secure and censorship-resistant, allowing users to verify their human identity while protecting privacy and ensuring neutrality; a blockchain-based identity layer allows agents to have a universal "passport," enabling the construction of more powerful agents that can freely cross ecosystems; as AI agents increasingly represent humans in transactions, blockchain tools such as Rollups, L2, and AI-native financial institutions can enable payments at a machine scale; and the integration of zero-knowledge proofs can enforce privacy within AI systems.