Web3 Wallets in 2026: AI Transforms the Crypto User Experience

For a long time, when we talked about wallets, we were really talking about assets.

For example, where BTC is stored, how to transfer ETH, how to manage NFTs, and how to access and use DeFi and RWA— for the vast majority of crypto users, a wallet is essentially the gateway to their assets.

But AI is changing all of this.

When users can describe their needs in natural language, and AI can assist in breaking down operational pathways, the role of the wallet is also evolving—especially over the past six months, as it has increasingly become like a control panel in the user’s digital world. From this perspective, the real question for wallets in the AI era may not be “whether they can do more for users,” but rather, as more tasks become automated, how can users continue to understand each of their interactions and maintain ultimate control?

This is also a new question that imToken continues to answer after ten years.

If you had told an Ethereum user in 2016 that ten years later, they could say to a chat interface, “Help me generate a minimalist wallet that only shows NFTs, AI-themed tokens, and common actions,” and immediately receive an application that runs on a testnet, they would likely have thought you were a project team member who couldn’t write a decent whitepaper.

But by 2026, this was no longer a science fiction scenario.

If you recently attended the imToken 10th anniversary event, you would have seen that this scenario is already achievable—users can simply state a natural language request, and a preliminary wallet interface will be generated, complete with NFTs, AI tokens, and common functions like Receive, Sign, and Swap.

“Your digital world, under your control,” is a fitting summary of imToken’s new narrative for its tenth anniversary—it’s not about turning the wallet into a platform that does everything, but rather recognizing that as the digital world users enter becomes increasingly complex, they need a long-term, trustworthy, secure, and clearly defined entry point that they fully control.

This entry point was once a wallet, and it will continue to evolve from a wallet, because the more complex the digital world becomes, the more we need a trusted starting point.

In the past, wallets primarily helped users prove that "these assets belong to me." Whether it was ETH, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, or later DeFi positions and RWA assets, the core role of wallets has always been as asset containers and signature entry points.

But in the AI era, wallets must also help users confirm more questions: Are these identities mine? Are these authorizations under my control? Do I fully understand these operations? Are these automated processes still within my control boundaries?

This is also key to the narrative of the "personal digital hub," meaning that the next evolution of wallets is not just wallets, but the foundational interface for users to enter the digital world.

Taking imToken as an example, if we divide its ten-year history into three segments, we can see a very clear trend:

• From 2016 to 2023, wallets served as containers for assets: starting with the Ethereum ecosystem, they expanded to accommodate new asset types such as ERC-20 tokens, DeFi, and NFTs. The core premise remained simple—keep private keys as securely as possible on the user’s own device, ensuring that every newly emerging token could be reliably stored within the same container. During this phase, users were most concerned with whether their assets could be safely stored and easily retrieved.
• In 2024–2025, wallets are reaching a paradigm shift: tokens are no longer just assets but are extending into identity, data, agents, and permission relationships; Ethereum’s narrative is no longer focused solely on scaling but is increasingly moving toward account abstraction and other directions closer to user experience. As a result, the rewriting of how users interact with the chain is causing the once relatively stable wallet component to begin shifting on a large scale for the first time.
• After 2026, wallets are evolving into "personal digital hubs": as AI begins to participate in app generation, transaction understanding, risk identification, and automated execution, wallets will no longer merely be tools used by individuals, but rather resemble each person’s digital dashboard, facilitating collaboration between users and AI agents;

These three changes can be condensed into one sentence: Token evolution, control unchanged.

However, asset formats, interaction methods, and AI capabilities will change—but what wallets truly must protect remains unchanged: users' ultimate control over their digital worlds.

Taking imToken’s 10th anniversary AI co-creation event as an example, what truly matters is not merely “using AI to generate a wallet interface,” but rather placing the question of “how wallets can integrate with AI” at a more fundamental level.

It’s important to clarify first that the AI direction currently showcased by imToken is not an aggressive approach of “handing over private keys to AI for automated trading.” Instead, it focuses on three more practical avenues: enabling users to participate in wallet co-creation using natural language, making the wallet’s core capabilities easier for developers and AI systems to access, and embedding security rules into the generation and interaction processes from the outset.

We believe this path better aligns with the logic of the wallet industry.

Because a wallet is not a regular app. A mistake in a button on a regular app might only result in a poor experience; but an error in a signature, authorization, or private key handling process in a wallet can lead to real asset loss. Therefore, in the AI era, wallets must not only emphasize "fast generation," but also prioritize "secure generation," "understandability," and "verifiability."

The most concrete action is to further open up Token Core capabilities to co-creation scenarios. For ordinary users, the name "Token Core" may sound technical, but you can think of it as the "heart" of the imToken wallet, responsible for core functions such as private key and keystore management, address generation, transaction signing, and multi-chain support.

In simple terms, wallet interfaces can vary widely, but what truly determines whether a wallet can securely manage assets, sign transactions correctly, and operate reliably across different blockchains is its underlying "heart."

As early as 2018, Token Core was open-sourced. At that time, it primarily served imToken’s own mobile wallet, enabling multi-chain asset management and signing capabilities on iOS and Android. Today, Token Core has evolved into a cross-platform wallet core library supporting multiple public blockchains.

More noteworthy in the tenth-anniversary-related branches is the emergence of WebAssembly.

WebAssembly sounds technical, but in simple terms, it allows the core wallet functionalities that were traditionally limited to apps or local environments to run more easily in web browsers. This means web-based wallet demos, AI-generated wallet applications, and developer-built wallet prototypes can directly access underlying wallet capabilities.

The significance of this is that wallets are no longer just a collection of features within a closed app, but can become a set of more open, composable foundational capabilities—alongside which several easier-to-understand tools have emerged:

• The Token Core CLI demo can be understood as a "command-line demonstration platform" that breaks down core wallet operations—such as creating a wallet, deriving addresses, managing keystore, and signing transactions—allowing developers and AI to more intuitively understand what's happening beneath the hood of a wallet.
• The Token UI can be understood as a "wallet interface template library": built on imToken’s design system, it helps participants quickly build wallet-like interfaces, allowing users to generate a wallet interface prototype with AI without having to design every button, list, or asset card from scratch;
• security/SKILL.md reads more like a specialized "Wallet Security Guide" written for AI coding assistants: when generating code involving mnemonics/private keys, signatures, or authorizations, the AI must not merely focus on implementing functionality—it must first understand where the red lines are; any operation involving assets must require user confirmation.

This set of open-source actions may differ from how many people previously understood wallet competition.

In the past, wallets were often simply understood as apps, and the advantage went to those that supported more blockchains, had more attractive interfaces, or offered more comprehensive DApp access. But in the AI era, wallet competition may take on a different form: those who can provide more trustworthy underlying capabilities, enable users and developers to safely combine wallet functions, and maintain security boundaries even during AI-generated experiences will have the greatest chance of becoming the foundation of users’ digital worlds.

This is why imToken’s AI capabilities should not be simply understood as “creating AI-generated wallet activities.” It actually addresses a more fundamental question: As AI can generate an increasing number of wallet interfaces, interactions, and applications, what must remain stable? What can be opened up for users and the community to reconfigure? And what must be constrained by security rules?

imToken’s answer is to leave trust to the core, control to the user, and innovation to the community.

What can we expect the future of Web3 wallets to look like in the next decade?

When you place these two lines side by side—one where imToken puts the wallet core, UI templates, and security rules directly into the hands of users and developers, and the other where AI begins to gain stronger understanding and orchestration capabilities between users and the chain—the position of an ordinary crypto user is undergoing an interesting shift.

In the past, users were more adapting to wallets.

For example, users will use the wallet homepage as it is designed; they will click on the features the wallet supports; they will follow the transaction process step by step. Even power users often simply switch between these fixed functions.

However, with AI involvement, wallets may increasingly adapt to users. This means that Web3 wallets over the next decade may not simply become more feature-rich, but rather more personalized in form:

• You may no longer need to endure a one-size-fits-all wallet homepage—for instance, if you're a heavy DeFi user, let AI generate a minimalist interface focused solely on yields, risks, and position changes, consolidating key positions across chains, yields, redemption times, and risk statuses in one view.
• If you're only concerned with stablecoin transactions, you can set your wallet homepage to display only your USDC and USDT balances, recent deposits, and commonly used receiving addresses—freeing you from distractions caused by unrelated assets and entries.
• If you're actively involved in LSTs/LRTs, your wallet can consolidate the underlying ETH positions, yields, exit windows, and potential risks of different staking vouchers into a single, easier-to-understand dashboard;
• If you simply want to set up a small wallet for your family, it can display only receiving, sending, and balance information, while hiding complex features like DApps, approvals, and cross-chain functions.

The underlying signature, address, and transfer logic remain unchanged; what has changed is the upper-layer experience. In short, a wallet is no longer just a standard component, but rather a digital tool assembled from a wallet core, a UI kit, and individual needs.

Looking further ahead, the next generation of crypto users may face an on-chain world populated by numerous AI agents.

Your AI assistant scans stablecoin pool spreads for you daily; your research agent conducts small-scale tests for you when new protocols launch; your payment agent handles subscriptions, refunds, and settlements; your asset management agent reminds you to rebalance based on rules you've set.

These scenarios may sound aggressive, but they do not mean users should hand over their private keys to AI. On the contrary, the more powerful the agent, the more critical the wallet becomes. After all, a healthy AI-wallet relationship isn’t about allowing the agent to take unlimited control of user assets—it’s about letting the agent only make requests, while the wallet translates those requests into understandable transaction details for the user and ultimately leaves the final confirmation in the user’s hands.

In other words, the AI Agent can handle identifying opportunities, making recommendations, and generating pathways; the wallet must be responsible for risk alerts, permission constraints, and final authorization.

Overall, AI will make wallets smarter and on-chain operations smoother—a massive advancement that has only just begun.

The fundamental logic of the crypto world has always been built on user control; the issue of private keys will not disappear with the advent of AI, but instead become even more important.

The new narrative of imToken, and where the real focus in the wallet space lies, is here.

Especially as the digital world expands from assets to identity and AI agents, users still need a trusted entry point to understand, verify, and control every digital action. Therefore, the evolution from a trusted main wallet to a personal digital hub is not merely a conceptual rebranding, but a natural extension of the wallet’s role in a new technological environment.

Perhaps by 2036, looking back at 2026, we will see a slightly counterintuitive truth: the next decade of wallets won’t just be about becoming more powerful in functionality, but about users transitioning from being served to defining the services themselves.

Your digital world, under your control.