Franklin Templeton, the traditional asset manager with nearly $1.8 trillion under management, says agentic AI could become a “killer app” for broader blockchain adoption.
In an official post published on July 22, Sandy Kaul, the firm’s head of digital assets and innovation, wrote that “blockchain will play a critical role in unlocking agentic AI’s consumer transaction potential, and the growth of agentic AI is likely to become the ‘killer’ application that drives blockchain adoption.”
Blockchain rails for AI-driven payments
Kaul described agentic AI as software capable of handling shopping, booking and payments on its own, while carrying out multi-step tasks without human confirmation at every stage.
He estimated that agentic commerce could make up 15% to 25% of U.S. e-commerce sales by 2030.
His central argument is that machine-to-machine micropayments made by AI agents are a poor fit for traditional credit card networks because card fees are too high and settlement takes too long. Blockchain, by contrast, can clear these transactions at lower cost and close to real time.
Companies have already started testing that path. Kaul pointed to MoonPay’s MoonAgents, which allows AI systems such as Claude and Codex to connect directly to crypto wallets.
Public chain throughput takes center stage
In the post, Kaul compared public blockchains by transactions per second, or TPS, to assess their ability to handle agentic commerce. He singled out Aptos, Solana and BNB Chain as better suited to the use case, saying they can settle within seconds, far faster than Visa’s one- to three-business-day settlement cycle.
Using the figures listed in the article, Aptos processes about 12,933 transactions per second, Solana about 6,284, and BNB Chain about 3,252. Ethereum, by comparison, was listed at about 75 transactions per second.
That throughput gap, in Kaul’s view, will matter if networks are expected to support large volumes of machine payments in the future.
The argument extends to crypto assets
Kaul closed with an investment conclusion: “To capture the value of decentralized networks and businesses, investors will need to buy the cryptocurrencies and altcoins issued by these entities.”
That ties the rise of agentic AI directly to demand for native tokens on the public blockchains that support it.
The view also lines up with an outside market estimate. According to McKinsey Company, agentic commerce could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2030.