MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — Crypto wallets are being rebuilt for AI agents, executives at Trust Wallet and Mesh said Thursday, as the companies race to give autonomous software a way to hold value, prove identity and transact on-chain.
Speaking to CoinDesk Miami, Arjun Mukherjee, chief technology officer at Mesh, said the change was due to what he called the cold start problem of AI agents.
“An agent can’t do anything until they fund their portfolio,” he said. “It’s very difficult for the agent to act until they have a wallet to do something and they have value to transact with. And all of a sudden, enter crypto. Crypto has found its kind of niche, its killer app.”
Mesh, which builds a layer of connectivity between exchanges, wallets, smart contracts and decentralized exchanges, has launched a product called Smart Funding that routes payments between chains, networks, accounts and tokens for human and agent users.
Felix Fan, CEO of Trust Wallet, said the company takes a deliberately divided approach to agent onboarding. On its consumer crypto app, where users hold the keys, agents act as a co-pilot to simplify navigation and reduce friction without taking custody control.
“Users still hold the keys and all these permissions. At every step, they have to give consent,” Fan said. The agent’s role on the consumer’s side is to “speed up the process and also help them better understand how to navigate the chain.”
On the developer side, Trust Wallet has adopted a more aggressive posture. The company recently launched an agent kit that allows agents to autonomously perform on-chain transactions, transfers, and other actions, and it is implementing EIP-8004, an Ethereum proposition that provides agents with on-chain identity and credit style scores.
“On the crypto application side, we enable humans to have superpowers through AI, while on the developer side, we enable agents to do something like humans,” Fan said.
On accountability, Mukherjee said Mesh was wary of importing the frictions of traditional finance into agent payments.
“AI should augment human judgment, not replace human responsibility,” he said, adding that responsibility for an agent’s actions lies with the institution deploying them.
Both panelists said they expect AI labs to launch their own wallets. X has spoken about X Money before, Fan noted, and “Grok will most likely have a wallet inside.”
“Claude and all these players can run on chain maybe tomorrow,” Fan said. “So we’re open to that challenge.”
Mukherjee said Mesh’s strategy is to remain wallet, network and token agnostic.
“If there is Web3-based e-commerce on any network, on any token, and on any connected fund, we all win,” he said.
