The Agentic Future: Agentic Payment Rails Evolve & TAO Halving Approaches (12.2.25)
This week’s crypto AI landscape saw Chainlink’s expansion, TAO halving pressure, robotics momentum, new compute and ZK launches, and a wave of agent-powered product releases.
This Crypto AI newsletter consists of three parts:
Snippet Partner (Bluwhale_AI)
Market Overview
Emerging Developments
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AI Roundup
Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) mindshare is holding steady this week at 25%:
Broader crypto attention is currently focused on:
Prediction markets, which saw a spike to 5%
Privacy as Miden goes live for Ethereum + Z Cash continues to gain traction
The beauty of AI and the agentic infra built around the tech is that this will also disrupt other industry segments; riding the tailwinds.
There are several agents and AI protocols that are supporting this growth; take Dome + Openserv for the prediction market trading tools or a Polymarket ETF ($BETTER):
Or ZKML (Machine Learning) protocols that assist with secure training environments for AI models.
a) DeAI Market Cap
The overall DeAI market cap is up down slightly this week, but Chainlink has been added to the Coin Gecko Index as it becomes more integral to pricing data for AI:
Most of the AI tokens moved consistently with the broader crypto market which saw a downturn as fears exacerbated from the Japan Carry Trade Unwind.
Chainlink announced the next era of Chainlink today with the intention of bridging everything with blockchains. This includes agentic workflows; we saw several announcements around its CRE (Chainlink Runtime Environment) last week
The Grayscale Chainlink GLINK ETF is also set to begin trading, bridging the crypto markets closer with tradFi.
TAO halving is just 10 days away with anticipatd supply squeeze on issuance of tokens to validators by half. Several subnets are building out AI and Robotics models with several real world use cases:
While the coverage and hype around x402 has subdued from the prior levels, the economic activity continues:
b) Robotics Market Cap
The Robotics market cap fell by $84m (-9%) to $866m this week:
Virtuals published major quarterly update highlighting key milestones achieved over the past three months (Q4 2025) and outlining their roadmap for scaling “agentic GDP” (aGDP) [the autonomous economic output generated by AI agents on their blockchain-based platform] to over $3B annualized by 2026.
NATIX is the team behind StreetVision Subnet (72) on opentensor which decentralizes the intelligence built to analyze NATIX’s data
2. Crypto AI Agent Analysis
Nansen Smart Capital Flow Analysis
Capital net flows have resurfaced some familiar projects in Ai16z, ARC and Fartcoin:
sUSD is related to the USDai AI revenue backed protocol that generates yield on deposits used to acquire GPUs for AI. Another tranche of deposits are live until the Total Cap of $825mm is reached.
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week:
News this week includes:
The Bittensor halving is in 10 days (December 12th); Daily TAO emissions drop from 7,200 to 3,600. The main concern raised is around network security with an anticipated 20% drop in validators to < 2k; But is this a mandatory caveat before the supply crunch?
Safello’s TAO ETP gained traction with 31% monthly volume increase to $10m on SIX Swiss Exchange and Deutsche Börse
0xbeepit teases “Agent Trader - Season One: Grand Prix”, which is a 14-day autonomous AI trading competition where multiple AI agents trade real capital on-chain with the goal of maximizing returns
CocoonNikolaiAI, a privacy-focused decentralized AI compute platform, officially launched on TON_blockchain: The platform utilizes a “client-proxy-worker” model where GPU owners rent out computing power to process AI queries in exchange for TON tokens.
AnthropicAI released a report suggesting that AI agents are a threat to smart contract security. “AI found $4.6M worth of exploits in smart contracts”
chutes_ai partners with zeussubnet to bring the best weather forecasting models to Chutes, starting with Microsoft Aurora
xmaquina closed a strategic funding round led by Borderless Capital, signaling institutional confidence in tokenized robotics automation
VPAY_Global launches vLink (instant global payments through a single link); This is powered by x402 (agentic payments standard) and lets anyone receive crypto instantly from any wallet and convert it to USD on a vPay Visa card. virtuals_io ACP network is evolving
warden protocol partners with caesar_data to bring citation-backed research directly into AI agents and smart contracts. Caesar recently announced they were working with Centrifuge to issue tokenized US equity for its AI company
SurfAI changes X handle and depreciates “Executor”. Their Surf 2.0 upgrade will introduce a new UI and features that pave the way for better execution
useTria rolls out its “Tria Treasure” campaign enabling users to make purchases with their Neo Bank card with a daily chance of being selected to have it reimbursed. Tria uses Best Path AI tech to find the optimal token swapping and settlement path on the back end
Advancements in the geospatial robotics sector arrive through the launch of the helium Deploy app; The app integrates with Rovr Network, a DePIN project incentivizing the collection of high-definition 3D geospatial data critical for autonomous vehicle navigation
vooi_io‘s final Epoch goes live with 30M points up for grabs ahead of its anticipated token launch. This YZi Labs backed protocol recently raised funds on Legion, Echo and uses AI as part of its PERP DEX aggregation platform
That’s a wrap for issue 153 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.
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All eyes on that TAO halving...