AI Reshaping DAOs and the Ethereum Ecosystem: From Collective Intelligence to Super Individuals

Do you think the era of AI "super individuals" in Web3 will benefit DAOs?

For over a decade, the Web3 world has believed that collective intelligence can create more equitable organizational structures, and DAOs are the most iconic embodiment of this idea, enabling strangers around the globe to collaboratively participate in decision-making and governance.

However, the emergence of AI is quietly influencing this premise.

When an individual can simultaneously own multiple AI Agents that automatically conduct research, execute trades, manage assets, and even participate in governance, tasks once requiring a DAO or a team are being condensed into a new unit: the individual + AI.

This also raises a new question: will this benefit DAOs and the broader crypto world?

Over the past year, the evolution of AI has been nearly exponential.

From the earliest chat assistants to today’s AI Agents that can write code, conduct research, and automate tasks, a clearer trend is emerging: personal capabilities are being exponentially amplified.

Today, an ordinary person can use AI to accomplish many tasks that previously required a team, such as analyzing on-chain data, organizing research information, and even automatically executing arbitrage or DeFi strategies.

In other words, AI is compressing many tasks that previously required teams into individual-AI units, which explains why an increasing number of Web3 projects are beginning to discuss the new concept of “AI-native organizations”—in such organizational structures, humans handle goals and judgment, while AI handles execution and collaboration.

And DAOs were, in essence, the earliest testing ground for this model.

It is well known that since its inception, the DAO has sought to address one fundamental question: how to enable collaboration among strangers around the world. However, in practice, DAO governance and operations have consistently faced several challenges: low efficiency in information processing, complex decision-making processes, and high time costs for participants.

The emergence of AI provides new solutions to these challenges. For example, AI can automatically organize proposals and governance discussions, generate voting analysis reports, execute certain on-chain operational tasks, and manage community information flows. Ultimately, by integrating AI into the governance process, a DAO’s core team could become extremely small while overall efficiency is significantly improved.

This is also a key intersection of AI and Web3, where DAOs decentralize organizations and AI automates execution.

However, for AI to truly participate in on-chain economics, it still requires three key capabilities: asset custody, trade execution, and trusted settlement.

And these three things are precisely what blockchain excels at.

As mentioned previously, on September 15, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation established an AI team called "dAI," with the core mission of allocating resources to define standards, incentives, and governance structures for AI models on blockchain, including model trustworthiness—that is, how to make AI behavior verifiable, traceable, and collaborative within a decentralized environment.

ERC-8004 was advanced under this context as one of the core standards. Unlike payment protocols such as x402, ERC-8004 does not directly address “how money is transferred,” but instead seeks to answer a more fundamental question: How can AI agents be identified, trusted, and participate in economic collaboration without platform endorsement?

Precisely for this reason, the backing team behind ERC-8004 is exceptionally prominent: led by Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team, in collaboration with Google, Coinbase, and MetaMask, it brings together nearly all three key entry points—AI, trading, and wallets. This level of support sends a clear signal: this is not merely an application-layer experiment, but a deliberate, long-term infrastructure bet (see further reading: “The New Boarding Pass for the AI Agent Era: Why Ethereum Is Championing ERC-8004?”).

A more intuitive analogy might help: if ERC-8004 is the AI’s “identity card,” then a wallet is the AI’s “account and execution terminal,” since for an AI to truly participate in economic activities, it must be able to manage assets, pay fees, and sign authorizations.

Traditional wallet interfaces were designed for humans, requiring us to stare at screens and click to confirm, but interactions in the AI world occur at millisecond speeds, with high frequency and massive volume—this has given rise to a new form: the "Agent Wallet," transforming wallets into AI-driven asset interfaces and execution endpoints:

• Non-custodial authorization: You can create a separate, restricted sub-wallet for your AI Agent that can autonomously execute trades within limits you set (e.g., maximum of 500 USDC per transaction) without requiring manual confirmation each time, while you retain full control of the primary key—the AI acts solely as your authorized agent.
• Cross-chain asset management: AI can instantly query your assets across 100+ blockchains and automatically rebalance, stake, or arbitrage based on your predefined strategies, freeing you from tedious daily monitoring so you can focus on higher-level strategic decisions.
• Human-AI collaboration: This isn’t about complete hands-off automation, but rather a flexible confirmation system—such as automatic execution for small amounts and alerts for large ones. AI handles identifying opportunities and building trades, while you retain control over the final click, perfectly combining human judgment with AI’s execution efficiency.

From this perspective, it can be said that computing power is not the endgame of AI—wallets are the true gateway to the AI economy.

Stablecoins like USDT and USDC are inherently designed for AI—they are borderless, programmable, and capable of instant settlement, perfectly aligning with AI’s extreme demand for speed, low cost, and frictionless transactions.

From this perspective, when AI economic activities begin to operate on a millisecond scale, only on-chain currencies and wallets in the Crypto world can keep up with this pace.

For this reason, an increasing number of developers are beginning to view Ethereum as the financial infrastructure for AI.

A noteworthy recent data point is that Ethereum's staking queue has exceeded 3.8 million ETH, indicating that more capital is entering the network to help secure it and earn rewards.

In short, from DAO collaboration to on-chain agents, and further to wallets serving as AI’s asset interfaces, Ethereum is gradually evolving into the foundational infrastructure of the AI economy.

In the AI era, this stable infrastructure is crucial, as AI agents may eventually need to automatically manage assets, participate in DeFi, and execute trades—actions that all rely on a trusted, decentralized settlement layer.

Currently, Ethereum remains the most mature option.

I previously emphasized that Ethereum is competing here for a more subtle new label: the underlying settlement layer for AI collaboration—in this vision, AI agents across different platforms, chains, and organizations can operate within their own environments, but when they need to establish trust, custody value, or settle outcomes, they ultimately return to a commonly accepted neutral layer.

This new role aligns closely with Ethereum’s evolving position within the global financial system—not striving to be the fastest execution layer or attempting to encompass every use case, but instead securing a more foundational role as a trusted settlement and order layer.

Overall, under this structure, blockchain is not just a financial system but could also become the trusted infrastructure for the AI economy, and Ethereum may be standing at the center of the stage.

The integration of AI and the crypto world goes far beyond simple technological layering. From the organizational structure of DAOs, to Ethereum’s infrastructure, to the combination of AI agents with wallets, a new path is gradually becoming clear: individual capabilities are amplified, organizational structures are reshaped, with AI handling execution and blockchain handling settlement.

In the coming years, we are likely to see increasing AI-driven on-chain economic activity, with Ethereum and wallets serving as the key gateway connecting humans, AI, and the on-chain world.

Stay tuned.