Space Review | The Eve of Web 4.0: OpenClaw Ignites the AI Agent Wave, Bank of AI Establishes 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 the previous AI boom was still at the tool level, the core of this round of transformation is that AI Agents are evolving from programs that execute commands to participants capable of independent action and autonomous decision-making. This transformation ignited by AI Agents has also accelerated the concept of Web 4.0 into the public eye, heralding a new era where humans and intelligent agents together constitute the network主体 and collaboratively create value.

In this wave, AINFT officially launched the AI Agent new infrastructure, Bank of AI, which builds an AI Agent financial operating system through the deep integration of key underlying tools such as the x402 payment standard, the 8004 on-chain identity protocol, MCP Server, Skills, and OpenClaw's extension plugins. This system provides core financial capabilities such as on-chain payments, identity authentication, and DeFi operations for AI Agents, becoming an important infrastructure for Web 4.0.

From the explosive popularity of OpenClaw to the launch of Bank of AI, AI Agents are transitioning from tools to主体. Around this transformation, this issue of Space Roundtable uses the explosive popularity of OpenClaw as a starting point to delve into the user needs behind the AI Agent wave, the potential evolution of Web 4.0, and the changes in user experience brought about by AINFT's AI Agent new infrastructure. Below is a highlight recap of this issue of Space.

OpenClaw Ignites the AI Agent Track: A Short-Term Trend or a Structural Signal for Web 4.0?

Recently, the emergence of OpenClaw has reignited the industry's attention on AI Agents, quickly becoming the "darling" of the tech and capital circles. When a tool can gather such high popularity in a short time, what exactly attracts users? Is it a breakthrough in technology itself, or does it hit upon some deeper needs? Around this question, guests explored from different dimensions.

Web3 Monkey approached from the execution layer, believing that OpenClaw's rapid rise is not merely a trend chase but precisely addresses users' deep pain points in efficiency and fault tolerance. He pointed out that in traditional repetitive execution tasks, humans often expend a lot of energy dealing with trivial operations, while AI Agents taking over these tasks smooth out energy loss and significantly enhance efficiency. More importantly, humans are easily affected by emotional fluctuations and fatigue, leading to a high error rate in handling high-intensity tasks, whereas AI Agents can achieve high-standardized execution and predictability, making people feel more at ease. He bluntly stated that the cost-effectiveness of AI Agents in terms of efficiency, error rate, and cost far exceeds that of humans, especially in repetitive positions, where their substitutability is visibly apparent.

Continuing this line of thought, Wang Feng Anc made an important supplement from the perspective of human cognitive limitations. He believes that the human brain has limited capacity to process information, while AI Agents can operate 24/7. In this case, AI Agents can take on the cognitive burden of humans, helping to process vast amounts of information and achieve "cognitive outsourcing." Especially in handling on-chain transactions, risk control becomes a key pain point; the cost of making a mistake in on-chain operations is too high, making humans the most unstable variable, while AI Agents can bear the high-risk costs of errors, addressing the reality that traders cannot keep up with market rhythms.

It is precisely OpenClaw's ability to solve practical problems in efficiency, cognition, and risk that has ignited market enthusiasm for AI Agents, leading to a surge of various intelligent agents. This concentrated outbreak has led people to wonder: Are we witnessing the evolution from Web 3.0 to Web 4.0?

In the vision of Web 4.0, blockchain and token systems will serve as the underlying support, and AI Agents will no longer be tools but "intelligent agents" capable of acting on behalf of users. They will hold wallets, possess identities, execute transactions on-chain, participate in governance, manage assets, and even create value. Early signals of this structural change are being captured by more and more people. Wang Feng Anc stated that the essence of Web 3.0 was user sovereignty, immutability, and decentralization, with interaction primarily based on user clicks on interfaces. However, in the era of Web 4.0, the emergence of AI Agents means that future protocols may prioritize serving AI rather than humans.

Crypto.0824 confirmed this judgment with everyday examples. He compared the differences between traditional operations and AI operations: in the past, using SUN.io for token exchanges required opening a webpage, connecting a wallet, setting slippage, and signing transactions, a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. In the era of Web 4.0, one only needs to give an AI Agent a command, and it can automatically find the optimal path and execute it. This shift signifies a structural change in interaction logic, where humans no longer directly operate protocols but complete intentions through AI Agent intermediaries. More critically, he observed that some new DeFi protocols are designed from the outset to consider how to better enable AI calls, rather than making user interfaces more user-friendly. They provide dedicated API interfaces, optimize gas fees, and even set discounts for AI trading.

As AI Agents become active participants in the internet, possessing identities and assets, capable of reading and writing the network, and independently executing transactions, guests generally believe that we are witnessing the structural beginning of the evolution from Web 3.0 to Web 4.0. In the era of Web 4.0, humans and intelligent agents will jointly constitute the主体 of the network.

From Tools to主体, Bank of AI Builds Financial Infrastructure for Web 4.0

The true realization of the vision of Web 4.0 requires a set of infrastructure that allows intelligent agents to truly "come alive." Just as human society operates without bank accounts, identity verification, and payment networks, AI Agents need their own financial foundation to survive independently in the on-chain world. Against this backdrop, AINFT, a Web3 native AI platform within the TRON ecosystem, officially launched the AI Agent new infrastructure—Bank of AI, establishing a complete financial operating system for AI Agents and endowing each AI Agent with full financial operating capabilities. Specifically, this infrastructure includes five core components:

• x402 Payment Protocol, providing AI Agents with lightweight, low-cost on-chain payment capabilities, supporting automated settlement in high-frequency micropayment scenarios.

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

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

• Skills, offering modular DeFi operations, asset management, and other reusable capabilities.

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

These five components work in synergy, enabling AI Agents to have "bank accounts + identity cards + investment accounts," truly becoming independent participants in on-chain economic activities. The establishment of this system is the cornerstone of the intelligent agent economy transitioning from concept to reality.

However, when AI Agents can not only execute commands but also directly receive and make payments, and independently manage on-chain funds, is this a liberation of time for users or a gradual loss of initiative? Wang Feng Anc's answer points to the core: The issue is not whether to delegate power, but how much power to delegate and whether it is controllable.

Wang Feng Anc stated that if AI is a black box that can only accept results, anxiety about dependency will inevitably arise. But if AI is a configurable, limitable, and terminable tool, it can enhance efficiency rather than replace rights. He predicts that the core ability of humans in the future 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, which also demands an upgrade in user thinking.

Bank of AI precisely provides the capability to set these boundaries, allowing users to maintain control while enjoying automation. As a blockchain financial operating system designed specifically for autonomous AI Agents, it ensures that AI's financial behaviors are no longer a black box; every payment, every protocol interaction is traceable. Users can view the operational paths of AI Agents at any time, trace decision-making bases, and achieve effective control through preset permission boundaries. It is this configurable, traceable, and intervenable mechanism that liberates users from the anxiety of being "replaced by AI," allowing them to become "architects" who hold the 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 Web 4.0 has arrived. In this new landscape, humans and intelligent agents jointly constitute the主体 of the network, each performing their roles and evolving collaboratively. What AINFT is doing is building the financial infrastructure for AI Agents in this new world, allowing AI Agents to truly "live" on-chain while ensuring that humans always maintain control. The curtain on Web 4.0 has already been raised, and we are both witnesses and builders.