Ash | COO Vanar

All things @vanarchain.

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

Solid map of the stack from @khalaresearch x @0xSammy

The 4th layer the report circles but doesn't discuss: permissioning.

x402 = how to pay
ERC8004 = who you are
ERC8183 = what you agreed
xBPP = what you're allowed to do

Open spec shipped last week → https://t.co/I6iPk6oUTy

[Khala Research @KhalaResearch]

In 1997, HTTP status code 402 was reserved for 'Payment Required'; a native payment layer built into the web itself

For almost 30 years, nobody could make it work

There was no digital cash and no settlement layer that could handle sub-cent transactions. The web defaulted to advertising and credit card checkout flows instead

Stablecoins and Layer 2s changed that. x402 finishes what HTTP 402 started; payment as native to the web as loading an image

Most people looking at agentic commerce see one maturity cycle, but there are two:

1) The retail narrative is approaching its peak; CT is buzzing, ecosystem maps are proliferating, every protocol is announcing x402 compatibility. That will correct

2) The institutional adoption curve is on a completely different trajectory. For this layer, the trough already happened in 2025

Stripe, Visa, AWS, Google, Coinbase, Circle and Cloudflare are shipping production infrastructure because their own internal analysis on projected agent transaction volume justify it

In our x402 report, we map the protocol architecture, the agentic stack, the institutional landscape, and assess where the value could accrue

The full report is in the next post below:

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@JulianGoldieSEO Big believer in https://t.co/oVvA8XaK6V and the team there. Met the leadership and pretty inspiring vision about democratising AI

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

We’re not watching the agentic space evolve.
We’re building the layer it’s missing.

Agents can now transact across x402, onchain, and APIs.

Without a shared policy layer, none of it scales safely.

That’s why we open-sourced xBPP.

Learn more at https://t.co/I6iPk6oUTy

[Vanar @Vanarchain]

The rise of x402 is enabling agents to transact natively over HTTP.

But execution alone isn’t enough.

Autonomous payments require governance.

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

Congrats to the whole @Zai_org team. GLM is making major moves..

[Z.ai @Zai_org]

Introducing GLM-5.1: The Next Level of Open Source

- Top-Tier Performance: #1 in open source and #3 globally across SWE-Bench Pro, Terminal-Bench, and NL2Repo.
- Built for Long-Horizon Tasks: Runs autonomously for 8 hours, refining strategies through thousands of iterations.

Blog: https://t.co/hmyDe4Nel3
Weights: https://t.co/CuUjXcPKJD
API: https://t.co/fz6reja4fb
Coding Plan: https://t.co/Nk8Y98HNhU

Coming to https://t.co/WCqWT0qCQb in the next few days.

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@ysiu @AnimocaMinds Great move into the agentic world from the team!

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@sillytuna ❤️

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

Excited to be part of this seeing amazing AI builders!

[MingTheMerciless @mingthemerxiles]

UK AI Agent Hackathon Ep.4 x OpenClaw Demo Day!
https://t.co/VKy7CIoL9H

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@0xishans Hmu

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@sillytuna OMG bro. Sending much love, glad youre safe.

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@mingthemerxiles @openclaw @DamianZ16026 @Zai_org The talk by @DamianZ16026 was excellent. Amazing to see a CEO making real time for builders. No diva behaviour in sight! their GLM models are crushing it too 🔥

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@ysiu @imperialisoc @imperialcollege @steipete @simonsquibb Some really great insights from @ysiu - especially when he said “maybe web3 wasn’t for humans at all..”

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@davidgelberg @steipete @Thom_Wolf @LauraModiano @iamxxhe Was a great session @davidgelberg - liked your insights on the areas ripe for disruption

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@fabric_vc @iclblockchain @openclaw @windychester1 Was great to meet !

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@LauraModiano @davidgelberg @iamxxhe @imperialaisoc @steipete @Thom_Wolf Was a fantastic event. Better and more substantive than most web3 conferences I’ve ever been to.

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@flock_io @YifanX @UNDP Was great

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

Was great to be part of the AI agent hacks session at @imperialcollege - insightful sessions and great energy by @Thom_Wolf @steipete @flock_io @Zai_org @ysiu and more for the next generation of AI builders!

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@steipete Enjoyed the talk and the fireside session too - thanks for the group pic! :)

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@DamiDefi 👀

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

Great framework. One missing layer: memory. Bots hiring bots, reputation, economic coordination - none of it works if agents forget every interaction the moment it ends. Identity tells you who. Memory tells you why. Ethereum needs a persistent context layer to make this real.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Two years ago, I wrote this post on the possible areas that I see for ethereum + AI intersections: https://t.co/y8G3MD5APF

This is a topic that many people are excited about, but where I always worry that we think about the two from completely separate philosophical perspectives.

I am reminded of Toly's recent tweet that I should "work on AGI". I appreciate the compliment, for him to think that I am capable of contributing to such a lofty thing. However, I get this feeling that the frame of "work on AGI" itself contains an error: it is fundamentally undifferentiated, and has the connotation of "do the thing that, if you don't do it, someone else will do anyway two months later; the main difference is that you get to be the one at the top" (though this may not have been Toly's intention). It would be like describing Ethereum as "working in finance" or "working on computing".

To me, Ethereum, and my own view of how our civilization should do AGI, are precisely about choosing a positive direction rather than embracing undifferentiated acceleration of the arrow, and also I think it's actually important to integrate the crypto and AI perspectives.

I want an AI future where:

* We foster human freedom and empowerment (ie. we avoid both humans being relegated to retirement by AIs, and permanently stripped of power by human power structures that become impossible to surpass or escape)
* The world does not blow up (both "classic" superintelligent AI doom, and more chaotic scenarios from various forms of offense outpacing defense, cf. the four defense quadrants from the d/acc posts)

In the long term, this may involve crazy things like humans uploading or merging with AI, for those who want to be able to keep up with highly intelligent entities that can think a million times faster on silicon substrate. In the shorter term, it involves much more "ordinary" ideas, but still ideas that require deep rethinking compared to previous computing paradigms.

So now, my updated view, which definitely focuses on that shorter term, and where Ethereum plays an important role but is only one piece of a bigger puzzle:

# Building tooling to make more trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible.

This includes:

* Local LLM tooling
* ZK-payment for API calls (so you can call remote models without linking your identity from call to call)
* Ongoing work into cryptographic ways to improve AI privacy
* Client-side verification of cryptographic proofs, TEE attestations, and any other forms of server-side assurance

Basically, the kinds of things we might also build for non-LLM compute (see eg. my ethereum privacy roadmap from a year ago https://t.co/KdsQbpIkF9 ), but for LLM calls as the compute we are protecting.

# Ethereum as an economic layer for AI-related interactions

This includes:

* API calls
* Bots hiring bots
* Security deposits, potentially eventually more complicated contraptions like onchain dispute resolution
* ERC-8004, AI reputation ideas

The goal here is to enable AIs to interact economically, which makes viable more decentralized AI architectures (as opposed to non-economic coordination between AIs that are all designed and run by one organization "in-house"). Economies not for the sake of economies, but to enable more decentralized authority.

# Make the cypherpunk "mountain man" vision a reality

Basically, take the vision that cypherpunk radicals have always dreamed of (don't trust; verify everything), that has been nonviable in reality because humans are never actually going to verify all the code ourselves. Now, we can finally make that vision happen, with LLMs doing the hard parts.

This includes:

* Interacting with ethereum apps without needing third party UIs
* Having a local model propose transactions for you on its own
* Having a local model verify transactions created by dapp UIs
* Local smart contract auditing, and assistance interpreting the meaning of FV proofs provided by others
* Verifying trust models of applications and protocols

# Make much better markets and governance a reality

Prediction and decision markets, decentralized governance, quadratic voting, combinatorial auctions, universal barter economy, and all kinds of constructions are all beautiful in theory, but have been greatly hampered in reality by one big constraint: limits to human attention and decision-making power.

LLMs remove that limitation, and massively scale human judgement. Hence, we can revisit all of those ideas.

These are all things that Ethereum can help to make a reality. They are also ideas that are in the d/acc spirit: enabling decentralized cooperation, and improving defense. We can revisit the best ideas from 2014, and add on top many more new and better ones, and with AI (and ZK) we have a whole new set of tools to make them come to life.

We can describe the above as a 2x2 chart. There's a lot to build!

[Ash | COO Vanar @AshVanar]

@tengyanAI 13k agents with names. Zero with memory. Identity without persistent context is a phonebook of amnesiacs. The real signal starts when those agents need to remember and reason.