The Agentic Future: Privacy in the Age of AI (11.18.25)
Cloudflare nukes the internet but that doesn't stop the AI Privacy movement as Near Intents hits ~$5 billion in volume, with ZCash contributing more than 10% of this cross chain activity
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Market Overview
Emerging Developments
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AI Roundup
Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) ‘Crypto Twitter’ mindshare has remained flat at 29% this week, but Robotics has emerged into the top 10 with 2% mindshare:
Some notable crypto AI developments this week include:
Macro takes a hit as both equities and broader crypto suffers with some double digit percentage declines; this has ripple effects into DeAI + Robotics
AAVE introduces its finance app with a million USD insurance cover; this essentially puts them under the Neo banking market segment
Tether looks into acquiring German robotics co’ “Neura” for a billion EUR:
a) DeAI Market Cap
The overall DeAI market cap is down by $4.7bn (-17%) to $22.5bn:
The entire DeAI market is down double digits, consistent with the broader crypto market which saw Bitcoin plummet 13%:
TAO: Netflow emissions went live recently, meaning that subnets need to be net contributors to the TAO ecosystem as a whole to be rewarded with emissions, rather than extractive. All this with the Halving coming up next month as emissions reduce.
ICP: The Caffeine App was launched, enabling self writing apps. This was incubated by the ICP team, but will be multi chain.
Near: Its intents cross chain swapping technology has seen explosive growth as the privacy narrative heats up. More on this in the Key Themes section below.
b) Robotics Market Cap
The Robotics market cap fell sharply by $300m (-22%) to $1.1bn this week:
Similarly the key driver is broader macro, but there are pockets of performance at the project level that are worth noting:
Geodnet: just completed its first-ever batch of U.S.–manufactured satellite mining stations. They also GEO-MEASURE & GEO-PULSE both recognized as Innovation Award Honorees at CES 2026 Tech Innovation Awards
Virtuals: Recently launched SeeSaw Subnet 5 on Bitrobot with 200k data sets now primed to be used by the latest robotics models.
Peaq: Launched its first agricultural robo farm, based in Hong Kong. It sold out in less than 24 hours.
Auki: With $2m of ARR already from its spatial technology (Posemesh), Auki is making real progress in the humanoid space for spatial awareness
Codec: This offers Visual Language Action (VLA) data for robotics to use to operate effectively in the real world. Imagine an agnostic Software Developer Kit that can plug into all the latest Physical models.
NATIX: camera infrastructure for mapping, autonomous driving, and physical AI. They’ve just disclosed 𝟐𝟐𝟓 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐊𝐌𝐬 𝐃𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧.
C) Key Theme: Privacy in the age of AI
One of the hot topics this week is Privacy coins, particularly in the age of AI.
As AI models proliferate the internet they can seamlessly access vast quantities of data, sometimes private.
One of the tokens leading the privacy movement is ZCash (ZEC); which is referred to as insurance against Bitcoin, while Bitcoin is insurance against Fiat currencies:
We’ve seen vast quantities of crypto swapped into ZEC in the past few weeks, sending its valuation back towards all time highs.
There’s been a stark outperformance of ZEC compared to BTC and ETH:
One of the adjacent infra that’s seen a surge in activity is Near’s “Intent” protocol:
NEAR Intents represents a pivotal development in AI-era privacy, enabling autonomous agents to execute cross-chain transactions while preserving anonymity
Since March 2025, users have been able to route assets through ZCash’s shielded pool which has slowly ramped up as more people applied weight to the importance of onchain privacy
~$5bn in volume has gone through Intents, of which $500m is related to ZCash; This has driven $9.7m in fees for Near
Previously ZEC was a walled garden, with Near opening this up: Zashi + NEAR Intents unlock a new privacy user experience (UX); Emphasis here on cross chain liquidity and enhanced UX with Zashi wallet
The Evolution of Crypto + Privacy:
As crypto rails become integrated into nation state digital systems, governments could leverage data to maintain control, some risking humanities basic right to privacy.
It’s wild that it’s taken this long for people to realize that transacting on a public ledger (without any real privacy) may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Other areas worth paying attention to:
Vitalik Buterin unveils Kohaku, a privacy-focused framework for Ethereum
Aleo’s zkML Transpiler: The result: verifiable, privacy-preserving intelligence
Mina Protocol’s 22KB blockchain enables lightweight zkML verification for mobile and edge devices
I’ll keep an eye on developments here as this will become increasingly important as AI models develop, and quantum computing threat ramps up.
2. Crypto AI Agent Analysis
a) Nansen Smart Capital Flow Analysis
Capital net flows have resurfaced some familiar projects in Ai16z + Alch this week:
Ai16z: Its migration to ElizaOS token concludes successfully. Swap ratio is 1:6.
sUSDai: This is staked USDai, which is a AI revenue backed yield protocol. Their latest Pendle Market YT-USDai token matured, likely resulting in reasonable token swap volume. They also published details on the CB Ventures backing.
b) Cookie Mindshare Analysis
No significant changes to the top three coins from last week (Cookie Warden + CXT). However, REKT experienced a calamitous liquidation event:
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
i) Weekly DeAI Roundup
Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week — Link
News this week includes:
Tether Explores €1 Billion Investment in NEURA (German Robotics); this is an indicator of where robotics is going. We’ve just seen crypto robotics break into top 10 on mindshare for the first time on kaito
Chainlink services expanded across several chains, including TAO. asset pricing will be invaluable for Bittensor subnets as they find product market fit in the real world
80% of startups pitching Andreessen Horowitz are running on Chinese open-source models. Not OpenAI. Not Anthropic: (h/t aakashg0 via rohanpaul_ai)
GEODNET just completed its first-ever batch of U.S.–manufactured satellite mining stations; as more satellites enter the atmosphere this type of Geospatial coverage will be invaluable for the imminent boom of robotics
gaibfdn reveals $GAIB tokenomics as binance apha is the first to list the project on November 19th
ConsumerFi provided me early access to its “Kinsu” finance product and you need to give it a whirl once its live. It leverages Near Intents on the back end, but also has a degen spinning wheel for points that encourages you to save. Awesome incentive structure, all while earning more yield than tradFi
JoinSapien Vehicle Model Mapping goes live; geo mapping for robotics will become invaluable to ensure accurate censors as robo taxis become the norm, We’ve already seen Waymo rollout across the rest of the west cost of the U.S.
cursor raised $2.3B in Series D funding from Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Thrive, Nvidia, and Google
MoonbeamNetwork (L1 on DOT) launches Datahaven for Decentralized Storage; alternative data solutions will become invaluable as AI ramps up
getdomeapi featured in Forbes as part of the YC25 cohort coverage; Dome partnered with openservai recently on the AI enabled prediction market trading
virtuals_io SeeSaw (Bitrobot Subnet 5) surpasses 200k robotics training tasks completed. Follow ExcelMaxi to stay up to date here
Virtuals ACP surpasses $100m in aGDP (agentic), with 1% of transaction processed via Butler sent to the GAME_Virtuals treasury. As per aixbt_agent: AI Agent revenue is hitting $170k per day
vooi launches with 100% token unlock at TGE at the end of November. $112.5m FDV for YZi labs’ (Binance) perp aggregator bet
sundarpichai quotes a Polymarket post on Prediction markets betting on Gemini 3 release dates - DPMs are going mainstream!
Talus_Labs highlights their road to TGE with idoldotfun and Nexus (N8N agentic workflow equivalent) going live on launch
Matthew McConaughey joins elevenlabsio as both an investor and a user
useTria‘s MindoAI leaderboard just wrapped Epoch 1 and $40k in rewards are available to claim; I just checked and found $600 of free internet money so it’s worth checking!
Additional Resources:
0xjacobzhao: The Convergent Evolution of Automation, AI, and Web3 in the Robotics Industry: Link
tengyanAI: Weekly AI Edge 73: Link
Defi0xJeff: Six trends shaping crypto: Link
ELI5_Defi: Eli5 Weekly Reading List 21: Link
Santiago: Return to Fundamentals: Link
Zacxbt: “degen heaven” : Link
That’s a wrap for issue 151 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.
Great article as usual Sammy.
I find the connection between Near Intents and ZCASH particularly interesting. Is Intents the only infra offering anonymous transactions? If so, I think they're sitting on a gold mine once even more users discover the sweetness of privacy. I always have thought that having ledgers open could keep some big players from embracing web3, good to see there's something being done about it.