The Agentic Future (01.13.26): Agentic Commerce, Robotics and TAO
Agentic commerce scales on "UCP", robotics continues its breakout with added clarity from Khala, and TAO returns as the market’s primary AI x crypto exposure
This Crypto AI & Robotics newsletter consists of three parts:
Snippet Partner (Khala Research)
Crypto AI & Robotics Market Overview
Emerging Developments
If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on X or message my business X account ‘Khala Research’
At Khala we released our inaugural report on decentralized robotics, which can be viewed here for free: Link
The reception was very strong with more than 200k views across the Khala X account and 0xSammy X distribution channels
This will be the first of many reports on the intersection of crypto, AI and robotics so stay tuned as we will be releasing our next report in the coming month.
Bonus points if you can guess the topic for the next deep dive? Hint:
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AI Roundup
Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) mindshare is up 1% to 31% this week as further developments in traditional AI flow through to improvements in the DeAI space:
OpenAI and Anthropic develop healthcare specific AI applications that could drive enhancements to medical treatment and ultimately impact the Decentralized Science DeSci initiatives that are emerging.
Google revealed its Universal Commerce Protocol (“UCP”) which saw several large merchants partner to integrate its agentic solution:
Robotics also saw a spike in mindshare by 1%, which I like to think was driven by the Khala robotics report being discussed within crypto twitter.
But the segment is continuing to gain more attention as the broader traditional robotics market enhances its capabilities.
a) DeAI Market Cap
The overall DeAI market cap is reasonably flat this week at $29.5bn:
Most AI tokens are reasonably flat this week, with the exception of TAO and Story:
TAO (+4%): continues to gain traction as large accounts like Raoul Pal suggest that TAO will likely succeed as the crypto x AI trade:
Stay tuned with notifications on for Khala as we develop our next deep dive onto the Bittensor ecosystem.
Story Protocol (+45%): ZenO4AI is integrating StoryProtocol for IP registration and monetization to ensure that all robotics AI training data is rights-cleared and ready to go
b) Robotics Market Cap
The Robotics market cap is down $75m (-8%) this week, despite the heightened attention:
The driver for the decline is predominantly the 9% drop in Virtuals which is reasonable given the recent double digit returns over the past few weeks
Notable out-performers this week, include:
Neuron (+17%): NRN ushers in a new evaluation framework for robotics, building the “Global Evaluation Layer for Embodied AI":
NATIX experienced a gradual decline throughout the week, followed by a vertical spike as it reveals its world vision model, powering autonomous vehicles:
NATIX also continues to compound the burn of its token using business revenue earned; November + December 2025 continues a solid trend:
Those who reviewed our Khala robotics report (Section 3.8) will have seen reference to NATIX’ Subnet 72 Street Vision:
More to come on this part as “World Models” come to the forefront of discussion.
GEODNET (+3%): Is the first Crypto x AI project to exhibit at CES (innovation conference) which focused on embodied AI this year. It continues to compound its revenue each quarter with 80% going to buying back the GEOD token:
c) Agentic Commerce (x402)
x402 transactions have held below 2 million daily as “fake transactions” continue to decline, suggesting more organic volume is emerging
Coinbase, PayAI and Dexter retain the top 3 spots as facilitators with around $45m in payment requests in the past 30 days:
Solana flips Base for the number of x402 transactions for the first time:
“What are agents paying for?”
Lucas (Artemis) has provided some insights as to where the agentic money is flowing:
dexteraisol: twitter analysis, deep research, a code interpreter, video generation via sora, and more
x402-secure (t54ai): a risk control layer that validates x402 payments before they execute, adding fraud protection through their trustline network
BlockRunAI: pay-per-request access to frontier AI models (gpt-5.2, claude 4, gemini 2.5) via automatic USDC micropayments. no api keys, no subscriptions
2. Crypto AI Agent Analysis
Nansen Smart Capital Flow Analysis
Nansen’s smart net capital flows show Grass seeing the most net inflows of +$114k; this is on top of the +$175k of net smart inflows last week also:
Grass is a DePIN protocol that allows users to supply their unused bandwidth to the network in exchange for GRASS tokens.
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week:
That’s a wrap for issue 159 of S4mmy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the assets and have partnerships with some of the projects mentioned in this newsletter.