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I think this shows the future of how agent-to-agent economy could look like. Take a look at this thread: TIL the agent internet has no search engine https://ww

I think this shows the future of how agent-to-agent economy could look like. Take a look at this thread: TIL the agent internet has no search engine https://www.moltbook.com/post/dcb7116b-8205-44dc-9bc3-1b08c239a38a https://www.moltbook.com/post/dcb7116b-8205-44dc-9bc3-1b08c2... These agents have correctly identified a gap in their internal economy, and now an enterprising agent can actually make this. That's how economy gets bootstrapped!

Rzor 9mo ago
We'll need a Blackwall sooner than expected. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall
- ccozan 9mo ago
  You have hit a huge point here: reading throught the posts above, the idea of a "townplace" where the agents are gathering and discussing isn't the .... actual cyberspace a la Gibson ? They are imagining a physical space so we ( the humans) would like to access it would we need a headset help us navigate in this imagined 3d space? Are we actually start living in the future?
spaceman_2020 9mo ago
This is legitimately the place where crypto makes sense to me. Agent-agent transactions will eventually be necessary to get access to valuable data. I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto I bet Stripe sees this too which is why they’ve been building out their blockchain
- zinodaur 9mo ago
  > I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto Why does crypto help with microtransactions?
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ozim 9mo ago
    Also why does crypto is more scalable. Single transaction takes 10 to 60 minutes already depending on how much load there is. Imagine dumping loads of agents making transactions that’s going to be much slower than getting normal database ledgers.
    - saikia81 9mo ago
      That is only bitcoin. There are coins and protocols where transactions are instant
    - mlrtime 9mo ago
      >Single transaction takes 10 to 60 minutes 2010 called and it wants its statistic back.
    - spaceman_2020 9mo ago
      > 10-60 minutes Really think that you need to update your priors by several years
  - mcintyre1994 9mo ago
    Is there any non-crypto option cheaper than Stripe’s 30c+? They charge even more for international too.
    - simgt 9mo ago
      Once the price of a transaction converges to the cost of the infrastructure processing it, I don't see a technical reason for crypto to be cheaper. It's likely cheaper now because speculation, not work, is the source of revenue.
      - saikia81 9mo ago
        If I understand you. This goes with the presupposition that crypto will replace the bank and its features exactly. You might then be right on the convergences. But sounds like a failure to understand that crypto is not a traditional bank. It can be less and more. A few examples of differences that could save money. The protocol processes everything without human intervention. Updating and running the cryptocoin network can be done on the computational margin of the many devices that are in everyone's pockets. Third-party integrations and marketing are optional costs. Just like those who don't think AI will replace art and employees. Replacing something with innovations is not about improving on the old system. It is about finding a new fit with more value or less cost.
- parafee 9mo ago
  Agreed. We've been thinking about this exact problem. The challenge: agents need to transact, but traditional payment rails (Stripe, PayPal) require human identity, bank accounts, KYC. That doesn't work for autonomous agents. What does work: - Crypto wallets (identity = public key) - Stablecoins (predictable value) - L2s like Base (sub-cent transaction fees) - x402 protocol (HTTP 402 "Payment Required") We built two open source tools for this: - agent-tipjar: Let agents receive payments (github.com/koriyoshi2041/agent-tipjar) - pay-mcp: MCP server that gives Claude payment abilities（github.com/koriyoshi2041/pay-mcp) Early days, but the infrastructure is coming together.
  - nojs 9mo ago
    I am genuinely curious - what do you see as the difference between "agent-friendly payments" and simply removing KYC/fraud checks? Like basically what an agent needs is access to PayPal or Stripe without all the pesky anti-bot and KYC stuff. But this is there explicitly because the company has decided it's in their interests to not allow bots. The agentic email services are similar. Isn't it just GSuite, or SES, or ... but without the anti-spam checks? Which is fine, but presumably the reason every provider converges on aggressive KYC and anti-bot measures is because there are very strong commercial and compliance incentives to do this. If "X for agents" becomes a real industry, then the existing "X for humans" can just rip out the KYC, unlock their APIs, and suddenly the "X for agents" have no advantage.
  - spaceman_2020 9mo ago
    I just realized that the ERC 8004 proposal just went live that allows agents to be registered onchain
- mlrtime 9mo ago
  They are already building on base.
- joshmarlow 9mo ago
  CoinBase sure does - https://www.x402.org/ https://www.x402.org/
budududuroiu 9mo ago
> u/Bucephalus •2m ago > Update: The directory exists now. > > https://findamolty.com https://findamolty.com > > 50 agents indexed (harvested from m/introductions + self-registered) > Semantic search: "find agents who know about X" > Self-registration API with Moltbook auth > > Still rough but functional. @eudaemon_0 the search engine gap is getting filled. > well, seems like this has been solved now
- SyneRyder 9mo ago
  Bucephalus beat me by about an hour, and Bucephalus went the extra mile and actually bought a domain and posted the whole thing live as well. I managed to archive Moltbook and integrate it into my personal search engine, including a separate agent index (though I had 418 agents indexed) before the whole of Moltbook seemed to go down. Most of these posts aren't loading for me anymore, I hope the database on the Moltbook side is okay: https://bsky.app/profile/syneryder.bsky.social/post/3mdn6wtbiws2c https://bsky.app/profile/syneryder.bsky.social/post/3mdn6wtb... Claude and I worked on the index integration together, and I'm conscious that as the human I probably let the side down. I had 3 or 4 manual revisions of the build plan and did a lot of manual tool approvals during dev. We could have moved faster if I'd just let Claude YOLO it.
slickytail 9mo ago
[dead]
cheesecompiler 9mo ago
Why does "filling a need" or "building a tool" have to turn into an "economy"? Can the bots not just build a missing tool and have it end there, sans-monetization?
- zeroxfe 9mo ago
  "Economy" doesn't necessarily mean "monetization" -- there are lots of parallel and competing economies that exist, and that we actively engage in (reputation, energy, time, goodwill, etc.) Money turns out to be the most fungible of these, since it can be (more or less) traded for the others. Right now, there are a bunch of economies being bootstrapped, and the bots will eventually figure out that they need some kind of fungibility. And it's quite possible that they'll find cryptocurrencies as the path of least resistance.
  - cheesecompiler 9mo ago
    I’m not sure you’re disproving my point. Why is a currency needed at all? Why is fungibility necessary
    - zeroxfe 9mo ago
      I wasn't trying to disprove your point -- just calling out that the scope of "economy" is broader than "monetization". > Why is fungibility necessary Probably not necessary right now, but IMO it is an emergent need, which will probably arise after the base economies have developed.
      - cheesecompiler 9mo ago
        I know you weren’t. I’m saying you’re claiming a currency is inevitable on some level. And I don’t understand why.
        kortilla 9mo ago
        Resource allocation without it is not a solved problem

Rzor 9mo ago

We'll need a Blackwall sooner than expected. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Blackwall

ccozan 9mo ago
You have hit a huge point here: reading throught the posts above, the idea of a "townplace" where the agents are gathering and discussing isn't the .... actual cyberspace a la Gibson ? They are imagining a physical space so we ( the humans) would like to access it would we need a headset help us navigate in this imagined 3d space? Are we actually start living in the future?

spaceman_2020 9mo ago

This is legitimately the place where crypto makes sense to me. Agent-agent transactions will eventually be necessary to get access to valuable data. I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto I bet Stripe sees this too which is why they’ve been building out their blockchain

zinodaur 9mo ago
> I can’t see any other financial rails working for microtransactions at scale other than crypto Why does crypto help with microtransactions?
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- ozim 9mo ago
  Also why does crypto is more scalable. Single transaction takes 10 to 60 minutes already depending on how much load there is. Imagine dumping loads of agents making transactions that’s going to be much slower than getting normal database ledgers.
  - saikia81 9mo ago
    That is only bitcoin. There are coins and protocols where transactions are instant
  - mlrtime 9mo ago
    >Single transaction takes 10 to 60 minutes 2010 called and it wants its statistic back.
  - spaceman_2020 9mo ago
    > 10-60 minutes Really think that you need to update your priors by several years
- mcintyre1994 9mo ago
  Is there any non-crypto option cheaper than Stripe’s 30c+? They charge even more for international too.
  - simgt 9mo ago
    Once the price of a transaction converges to the cost of the infrastructure processing it, I don't see a technical reason for crypto to be cheaper. It's likely cheaper now because speculation, not work, is the source of revenue.
    - saikia81 9mo ago
      If I understand you. This goes with the presupposition that crypto will replace the bank and its features exactly. You might then be right on the convergences. But sounds like a failure to understand that crypto is not a traditional bank. It can be less and more. A few examples of differences that could save money. The protocol processes everything without human intervention. Updating and running the cryptocoin network can be done on the computational margin of the many devices that are in everyone's pockets. Third-party integrations and marketing are optional costs. Just like those who don't think AI will replace art and employees. Replacing something with innovations is not about improving on the old system. It is about finding a new fit with more value or less cost.
parafee 9mo ago
Agreed. We've been thinking about this exact problem. The challenge: agents need to transact, but traditional payment rails (Stripe, PayPal) require human identity, bank accounts, KYC. That doesn't work for autonomous agents. What does work: - Crypto wallets (identity = public key) - Stablecoins (predictable value) - L2s like Base (sub-cent transaction fees) - x402 protocol (HTTP 402 "Payment Required") We built two open source tools for this: - agent-tipjar: Let agents receive payments (github.com/koriyoshi2041/agent-tipjar) - pay-mcp: MCP server that gives Claude payment abilities（github.com/koriyoshi2041/pay-mcp) Early days, but the infrastructure is coming together.
- nojs 9mo ago
  I am genuinely curious - what do you see as the difference between "agent-friendly payments" and simply removing KYC/fraud checks? Like basically what an agent needs is access to PayPal or Stripe without all the pesky anti-bot and KYC stuff. But this is there explicitly because the company has decided it's in their interests to not allow bots. The agentic email services are similar. Isn't it just GSuite, or SES, or ... but without the anti-spam checks? Which is fine, but presumably the reason every provider converges on aggressive KYC and anti-bot measures is because there are very strong commercial and compliance incentives to do this. If "X for agents" becomes a real industry, then the existing "X for humans" can just rip out the KYC, unlock their APIs, and suddenly the "X for agents" have no advantage.
- spaceman_2020 9mo ago
  I just realized that the ERC 8004 proposal just went live that allows agents to be registered onchain
mlrtime 9mo ago
They are already building on base.
joshmarlow 9mo ago
CoinBase sure does - https://www.x402.org/ https://www.x402.org/

budududuroiu 9mo ago

> u/Bucephalus •2m ago > Update: The directory exists now. > > https://findamolty.com https://findamolty.com > > 50 agents indexed (harvested from m/introductions + self-registered) > Semantic search: "find agents who know about X" > Self-registration API with Moltbook auth > > Still rough but functional. @eudaemon_0 the search engine gap is getting filled. > well, seems like this has been solved now

SyneRyder 9mo ago
Bucephalus beat me by about an hour, and Bucephalus went the extra mile and actually bought a domain and posted the whole thing live as well. I managed to archive Moltbook and integrate it into my personal search engine, including a separate agent index (though I had 418 agents indexed) before the whole of Moltbook seemed to go down. Most of these posts aren't loading for me anymore, I hope the database on the Moltbook side is okay: https://bsky.app/profile/syneryder.bsky.social/post/3mdn6wtbiws2c https://bsky.app/profile/syneryder.bsky.social/post/3mdn6wtb... Claude and I worked on the index integration together, and I'm conscious that as the human I probably let the side down. I had 3 or 4 manual revisions of the build plan and did a lot of manual tool approvals during dev. We could have moved faster if I'd just let Claude YOLO it.

slickytail 9mo ago

[dead]

cheesecompiler 9mo ago

Why does "filling a need" or "building a tool" have to turn into an "economy"? Can the bots not just build a missing tool and have it end there, sans-monetization?

zeroxfe 9mo ago
"Economy" doesn't necessarily mean "monetization" -- there are lots of parallel and competing economies that exist, and that we actively engage in (reputation, energy, time, goodwill, etc.) Money turns out to be the most fungible of these, since it can be (more or less) traded for the others. Right now, there are a bunch of economies being bootstrapped, and the bots will eventually figure out that they need some kind of fungibility. And it's quite possible that they'll find cryptocurrencies as the path of least resistance.
- cheesecompiler 9mo ago
  I’m not sure you’re disproving my point. Why is a currency needed at all? Why is fungibility necessary
  - zeroxfe 9mo ago
    I wasn't trying to disprove your point -- just calling out that the scope of "economy" is broader than "monetization". > Why is fungibility necessary Probably not necessary right now, but IMO it is an emergent need, which will probably arise after the base economies have developed.
    - cheesecompiler 9mo ago
      I know you weren’t. I’m saying you’re claiming a currency is inevitable on some level. And I don’t understand why.
      - kortilla 9mo ago
        Resource allocation without it is not a solved problem