Space Review｜On the Eve of Web4.0: OpenClaw Ignites the AI Agent Wave, Bank of AI Debuts to Lay the Financial Foundation for the Agent Economy

Recently, the explosive popularity of OpenClaw has once again brought the AI Agent track into the spotlight. If previous AI booms were still at the tool level, the core of this round of transformation is that AI Agents are evolving from programs that execute instructions into participants capable of independent action and autonomous decision-making. This revolution ignited by AI Agents is also accelerating the concept of Web4.0 into the public consciousness, heralding a new era where humans and intelligent agents jointly constitute the main actors of the network, collaborating to create value.

In this wave, AINFT has officially launched Bank of AI, a new infrastructure for AI Agents. By deeply integrating key underlying tools such as the x402 payment standard, the 8004 on-chain identity protocol, MCP Server, Skills, and OpenClaw's extension plugins, it constructs an AI Agent financial operating system. This system provides AI Agents with core financial capabilities like on-chain payments, identity authentication, and DeFi operations, positioning itself as crucial infrastructure for Web4.0.

From the explosive popularity of OpenClaw to the launch of Bank of AI, AI Agents are transitioning from tools to active participants. Centered on this transformation, this Space roundtable uses the OpenClaw phenomenon as a starting point to delve into the user demands behind the AI Agent wave, the potential evolution of Web4.0, and the changes in user experience brought about by AINFT's new AI Agent infrastructure. Below are the highlights from this Space session.

OpenClaw Ignites the AI Agent Track: A Short-Term Trend or a Structural Signal for Web4.0?

Recently, the sudden emergence of OpenClaw has reignited industry focus on AI Agents, quickly making it the "darling" of tech circles, capital markets, and companies big and small. When a tool can gather such high popularity in a short time, what exactly attracts users? Is it a breakthrough in the technology itself, or does it address some deeper needs? Guests explored this question from various dimensions.

web3 monkey approached from the execution layer, arguing that OpenClaw's rapid rise is not simply chasing a trend but precisely hitting deep-seated user pain points regarding efficiency and error tolerance. He pointed out that in traditional repetitive execution tasks, humans often expend significant energy on trivial operations. When AI Agents take over these tasks, the energy drain is eliminated, and efficiency leaps. More importantly, humans are susceptible to emotional fluctuations and fatigue, leading to high error rates when handling high-intensity tasks, whereas AI Agents can achieve highly standardized, predictable execution, providing greater peace of mind. He stated bluntly, AI Agents far surpass manual labor in terms of cost-effectiveness across efficiency, error rate, and cost, with their substitutability in repetitive roles already clearly visible.

Continuing this line of thought, Wang Feng Anc made an important addition from the perspective of human cognitive limitations. He believes that the human brain's capacity to process information is limited, while AI Agents can operate 24/7. In this context, AI Agents can shoulder the cognitive burden for humans, helping to process vast amounts of information, achieving "cognitive outsourcing." Especially when handling on-chain transactions, risk control becomes a key pain point. The cost of making a single mistake in an on-chain operation is too high, and humans become the most unstable variable. AI Agents can take on those high-cost-of-error risks, addressing the real problem of traders struggling to keep up with market pace.

It is precisely OpenClaw's ability to solve practical problems in efficiency, cognition, and risk that ignited market enthusiasm for AI Agents, leading to a mushrooming of various intelligent agents. This concentrated outbreak makes people wonder: Are we witnessing the evolution from Web3.0 to Web4.0?

In the vision of Web4.0, blockchain and token systems will serve as the underlying support. AI Agents will no longer be mere tools but "intelligent agents" capable of acting on behalf of users. They will hold wallets, possess identities, and execute transactions, participate in governance, manage assets, and even create value on-chain. Early signals of this structural change are being captured by more and more people. Wang Feng Anc stated that the essence of Web3.0 in the past was user sovereignty, immutability, and decentralization, with interaction still primarily based on users clicking interfaces. In the Web4.0 era, the emergence of AI Agents means future protocols may prioritize serving AI over humans.

Crypto.0824 used everyday examples to support this judgment. He contrasted traditional operations with AI operations: in the past, using SUN.io for token swaps required opening a webpage, connecting a wallet, setting slippage, signing transactions—a five or six-step process that was time-consuming and laborious. In the Web4.0 era, one simply gives an instruction to an AI Agent, which can automatically find the optimal path and execute it. This shift signifies a structural change in interaction logic; humans no longer directly operate protocols but complete intents through AI Agent intermediaries. More crucially, he observed that some new DeFi protocols are now designed from the outset considering how to be better invoked by AI, rather than making user interfaces more friendly. They provide dedicated API interfaces, optimize Gas fees, and even set discounts for AI transactions.

When AI Agents become active participants on the internet, possessing identities and assets, capable of reading/writing the network and independently executing transactions, guests generally agreed that we are witnessing the structural beginning of the evolution from Web3.0 to Web4.0. In the Web4.0 era, humans and intelligent agents will jointly constitute the main actors of the network.

From Tool to Actor: Bank of AI Builds Financial Infrastructure for AI Agents in Web4.0

The true realization of the Web4.0 vision requires a set of infrastructure that allows intelligent agents to truly "come alive." Just as the functioning of human society relies on bank accounts, identity verification, and payment networks, for AI Agents to survive independently in the on-chain world, they equally need their own financial foundation. Against this backdrop, AINFT, a Web3-native AI platform within the TRON ecosystem, has officially launched Bank of AI, a new infrastructure for AI Agents, establishing a complete financial operating system for them and endowing each AI Agent with full financial operational capabilities. Specifically, this infrastructure comprises five core components:

The x402 Payment Protocol provides AI Agents with lightweight, low-cost on-chain payment capabilities, supporting automated settlement for high-frequency micro-payment scenarios.

The 8004 Identity Authentication Protocol issues verifiable on-chain digital identities for each AI Agent, building a trust and reputation system.

MCP Server serves as a standardized interface between large AI models and blockchain services, bridging the connection between AI and the on-chain world.

Skills provide modular, reusable capabilities for DeFi operations, asset management, and more.

OpenClaw Extension Plugins enable any AI Agent based on the OpenClaw framework to gain full on-chain financial capabilities upon integration, achieving plug-and-play functionality.

These five components work in synergy, allowing AI Agents to possess "bank accounts + ID cards + investment accounts" just like humans, truly becoming independent participants in on-chain economic activities. The establishment of this system is the cornerstone for the intelligent agent economy to move from concept to reality.

However, when AI Agents can not only execute instructions but also directly send/receive payments and independently manage on-chain funds, for users, is this liberating time, or is it gradually losing initiative? Wang Feng Anc's answer gets to the core: The issue is not whether to delegate authority, but how much to delegate and whether it is controllable.

Wang Feng Anc stated that if AI is a black box that only accepts results, dependency anxiety is inevitable. But if AI is a configurable, limitable, and terminable-at-any-time tool, it enhances efficiency rather than replaces authority. He predicts that in the future, the core human capability will no longer be manual operation but the ability to configure AI—that is, how to define strategy boundaries, set risk parameters, and orchestrate the collaborative logic of multiple AI Agents. This also demands a mindset upgrade from users.

And Bank of AI precisely provides the ability to set these boundaries, allowing users to enjoy automation while retaining control. As an on-chain financial operating system specifically designed for autonomous AI Agents, it ensures that AI's financial behavior is no longer a black box. Every payment, every protocol interaction is traceable. Users can view the AI Agent's operation path at any time, trace decision-making rationale, and achieve effective control through preset permission boundaries. It is precisely this mechanism of configurability, traceability, and intervenability that liberates users from the anxiety of "being replaced by AI," transforming them into "architects" who hold the reins of control.

From the explosive popularity of OpenClaw to the launch of Bank of AI, the concentrated emergence of AI Agents is sending a clear signal: the future of Web4.0 is already here. In this new vision, humans and intelligent agents jointly constitute the network's main actors, each performing their roles and co-evolving. What AINFT is doing is building the financial infrastructure for AI Agents in this new world, enabling AI Agents to truly "live" on-chain while ensuring humans always retain control. The curtain has risen on Web4.0; we are both witnesses and builders.