Coinbase's Next Growth Engine... The Era of AI Agent Payments is Coming!

▲ Source: Coinbase Blog ©Coinreaders

Coinbase has identified the 'AI agent economy' as the next growth engine for the cryptocurrency market. As AI agents, which perform payments and transactions without human intervention, begin to actively operate on the blockchain, Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) are being mentioned as the most direct beneficiaries.

According to investment media outlet The Motley Fool on September 7 (local time), Coinbase Global (COIN) believes that an 'agent-to-agent economy' where AI agents pay each other and purchase services will drive the next growth phase of the cryptocurrency market. According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, over 100 million agent payments occurred on Coinbase's Base blockchain by Q1 2026. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, stated in late July that the transaction volume of AI agents could eventually surpass the total transaction volume of humans in the long term.

Agentic payments refer to a method where AI initiates and approves payments autonomously without direct human intervention. The related concept, agentic commerce, refers to economic activities where AI finds necessary services, compares prices, and makes direct expenditures according to goals set by humans or other AIs. Coinbase also participated in the launch of the x402 standard, which allows websites to request payments in a machine-readable format. When an AI agent accesses x402-based paid content or services, the server presents a price, and the agent pays with stablecoins on-chain.

In the Ethereum ecosystem, the ERC-8004 standard is also considered a key infrastructure for the expansion of the agent economy. ERC-8004, co-created by contributors such as the Ethereum Foundation and Coinbase, is a standardized identity layer that assigns a unique identity token and public feedback record to each registered AI agent. This not only provides a payment system for agents to purchase services but also a foundation for evaluating the work performed by those agents and tracking their history.

The Motley Fool named Ethereum and Solana as the most likely beneficiary assets in this trend. While most agent payments are currently made with stablecoins, and no specific network has secured an exclusive standard, holders of Ethereum and Solana can expect value appreciation through transaction fees generated from payments routed through their networks. In particular, Ethereum's decentralized finance (DeFi) asset size is $49 billion, and Solana's is approximately $6 billion, meaning both networks already possess a financial service ecosystem that AI agents can utilize.

The outlet assessed that investing in foundational networks with multiple use cases, like Ethereum and Solana, is relatively more advantageous than directly investing in individual tokens issued by agents or agent-specific service tokens. As AI agent commerce is still a high-risk growth area in its early stages, it is judged that these two blockchains, which also possess other growth drivers, can diversify downside risk while simultaneously benefiting from the expansion of the agent economy.

*Disclaimer: This article is for investment reference only, and we are not responsible for any investment losses based on it. The content should be interpreted for informational purposes only.*