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Crypto should be taking off in use in the AI age. Right now I have credits I paid open AI for so I can use their API. I have anthropic credits, I have some cr
by swalsh 1y ago
Crypto should be taking off in use in the AI age. Right now I have credits I paid open AI for so I can use their API. I have anthropic credits, I have some credits in a video generator app.
A2A is becoming a thing, and now it's a realistic thing to potentially expose an agent on a public endpoint to do useful work. Agents working with agents is a very clear future direction.
But everything is a closed ecosystem. But with the addition of a few extra fields to an Agent card (chain name, accepted tokens, cost) and perhaps a transaction addition to the task/send interface. We could build a network of agents working for agents. Compatible with each other. It doesn't have to be all on-chain. It's just the economic layer. You host the agent, the agent accepts payments. The agent makes payments. All the crypto tech we need already exists.
Use USDC, don't have to worry about speculation driving up costs. Use a network like SOL, AVAX, SUI and the transaction will be finalized in seconds.
Credits should be transferable, and not locked in little ecosystem.
We could take it one stop further. Prices could be dynamic. If GPU usage is high, cost should be high. If demand low, price should be low. Outages are a pricing issue, not a technical issue.
- rcxdude 1y agoSure, but a) this doesn't require blockchain, and b) there's no incentive for the various players to make credits portable.
- swalsh 1y agoI'm tired of the "this doesn't require blockchain" argument. The alternative is a centralized entity that controls payments. Is that REALLY your preferred solution?
- carlob 1y agoYes. Nothing about this needs to be modeled for adversarial agents.
- ebiester 1y agoThe alternative is continually watching over my shoulder for some sort of scam because I have no recourse. And agents just make it easier.
- mghfreud 1y agoI am not following where (in your initial message) you stated that “centralized entity that controls the payments is not good”
- yorwba 1y agoIt's the AI companies' preferred solution. You're free to host your own agent that takes crypto, but the other agents you expect your agent to interact with will want you to buy non-transferable credits up front. Why would they join in on a decentralized system that doesn't benefit them?
- sigwinch 1y agoYes, I’d rather start a bank chartered with my own rules that leverages regulation, and only use the existence of crypto as an odorous alternative when negotiating service fees with Visa.
- munksbeer 1y agoAre you talking about a stablecoin crypto? Because why would I buy tokens on a chain where the value of the tokens can change wildly from day to day? How do the services that accept those tokens value them and charge appropriately?
- podnami 1y agoYou can do this using OpenRouter; they accept USDC I think
- swalsh 1y agoI want a protocol, not a company that will act as a proxy.
- jhunter1016 1y agohttps://x402.org https://x402.org
- swalsh 1y agothat's neat
- lostmsu 1y agoIMO the website is terrible. Instead of putting what actually is transmitted up and front it just tells you to use their wrapper libs as middleware with 0 reference to the wire protocol. What HTTP headers are used? What's the body of the HTTP 402 response? The docs don't say any of that, they just say `npm install x402`.
- rollcat 1y agoSo you're saying cryptocurrency remains a solution in search of a problem?
- swalsh 1y agoclearly, that is not what I said. What I said is there is a very big problem (closed ecosystem of incompatible credit systems) that can be solved using this technology that does payments really well.
- rollcat 1y agoCan I go to any grocery shop, check out, and pay by sticking my watch to a terminal for one second? Can I go to any website, have my browser fill in the credit card details, and click "pay"? Can I submit a dispute if I get charged incorrectly? Because that's my bar for "does payments really well". Sure, I can't spend my Amazon gift cards for my Warframe platinum. Yeah, Amazon could strike a deal with Digital Extremes. And maybe I could even use that platinum on Fortnite skins. But their respective deals will happen in dollars, not dogecoins.
- croes 1y agoYeah lets combine two technologies that need lots of energy. Climate change is still a problem
- swalsh 1y agoA tired old debate devoid of facts. The chains I advocated for are proof of stake, and AI is a useful system worth the energy it uses. Should we not consume energy at all?
- h2782 1y agoYou've stated you're tired in several threads. Maybe you should take a break from the internet for a few minutes?
- surgical_fire 1y ago> A tired old debate devoid of facts. You are advocating for more fucking cryptocurrency. You don't get to ignore any response as "a tired old debate devoid of facts".
- dlubarov 1y agoHe wasn't ignoring anything, he was pointing out that that criticism is based on outdated information. Almost all modern blockchain designs (from the past ~10 years) do not promote energy waste via PoW. It's fine to point out the energy waste of more traditional PoW chains (particularly Bitcoin, which accounts for the bulk of PoW), but to frame that as a problem with blockchains in general is misguided.
- croes 1y agoA problem of cryptocurrencies. Blockchains are useful and need less power. Bitcoin is still the biggest player in the cryptocurrency world, so still a lot of wasted energy.
- topranks 1y agoPoS is sort of hard to bootstrap. ETH moved to it which was quite an achievement, but it’s difficult to see how it might have started that way. If Bitcoin fails then it seems to me the bottom will fall out of all of crypto So all of it still depends on PoW propping up BTC.
- pondemic 1y agoApparently one of the old school decentralized RPC providers (pocket network) has pivoted into being a way to access open data sources in a permissionless way. I think this is what you’re talking about? https://pocket.network/case-study-building-a-decentralized-deepseek-combining-open-data-compute-and-reasoning-with-pocket-network/ https://pocket.network/case-study-building-a-decentralized-d... I don’t disagree that it would be nice to be able to do this, but barring some black swan-esque event that changes how people see these things, it’ll probably always be somewhat niche compared to more permissioned or centralized systems. That or the decentralized systems will need to be VERY competitively priced to make the value-prop a bit more of a slam dunk for making this more widespread outside of philosophically-aligned hardliners and idealists
- mvdtnz 1y ago> Crypto should be taking off in use in the AI age. Right now I have credits I paid open AI for so I can use their API. I have anthropic credits, I have some credits in a video generator app. Sounds like things are working just fine without the extra cryptocurrency step.