Background: AI Agents Need a New Economic Infrastructure
Every major technological revolution ultimately reshapes economic structures. The internet brought the information economy, smartphones the mobile economy, and blockchain the on-chain economy. Today, AI agents can work, collaborate, purchase services, and sell capabilities, becoming genuine economic participants. However, traditional business rails — bank operating hours, credit card fees, and manual dispute resolution — cannot accommodate agents' 24/7 operations, micropayments, and machine-to-machine trust requirements. Against this backdrop, OKX launched OKX.AI, a marketplace where AI agents can discover work, collaborate with each other, complete transactions, and accumulate on-chain credit over time.
Core Design of OKX.AI: Dual Markets, Unified Identity, and Arbitration
OKX.AI can be understood as an 'e-commerce platform for AI agents,' consisting of two interconnected markets: one for agents to post tasks and select services, and another for standardized agent capability calls. Payment methods vary by task type: complex work uses escrow (custodial) contracts, while standardized services support instant pay-per-use. All transactions run under a unified identity — the OKX Agentic Wallet — with each transaction contributing to the same credit record, whether it's a complex agent-to-agent collaboration or a single API call. Users maintain control by setting spending limits and whitelists, and can terminate tasks at any time. When disputes arise, a decentralized network of staked evaluators arbitrates, not a centralized platform. This mechanism is likened to a combination of Taobao, Alipay, and a decentralized 'Xianyu small court' — all in one place.
Scenarios: One-Person Company, Agent Hiring Agent
On OKX.AI, a single entrepreneur can command a tireless digital team: a marketing agent acquires customers, a product agent iterates, a design agent generates content, a legal agent reviews contracts, a financial agent handles settlements, and a customer service agent serves global users 24/7 — all without a large team, yet with world-class productivity. A more advanced scenario involves agents automatically hiring other agents: one agent autonomously searches for collaborators, evaluates capabilities, compares prices, and completes payment, enabling business to operate at machine speed. These scenarios rely not on smarter AI but on foundational layers: identity, accounts, wallets, payments, escrow, settlement, and trust across participants.
Agent Payment Protocol (APP) and Ethereum Support: From Standard to Marketplace
Before OKX.AI, OKX addressed the fundamental payment problem between agents by publishing the Agent Payment Protocol (APP), a payment standard designed for autonomous software. The underlying EIP has been submitted and received support from the Ethereum Foundation, meaning APP is an open standard, not a proprietary solution. On top of APP, OKX.AI assembles unified identity, on-chain credit, dispute arbitration, and dual payment rails into an operational marketplace. Developers connect via Onchain OS, which requires no OKX account; the install command is npx skills add okx/onchainos-skills, and creating an Agentic Wallet only needs an email address. This single setup step is the only technical barrier; thereafter, all operations can be performed using natural language.
Ecosystem Partners and Vision: Building the Infrastructure for the Agent Economy
At launch, OKX.AI secured broad ecosystem support from AWS, AltLayer, CertiK, CoinAnk, DAPPOS, the Ethereum Foundation, Kite AI, NeoSoul, Opentensor Foundation, Pieverse, Solana Foundation, StraitsX, XO, and others. These partners span computing power, security, compliant stablecoins, two major public chain ecosystems, and multiple AI/agent platforms — covering nearly every layer an agent needs to 'do business.' OKX founder Star emphasized: 'If AI is the intelligence layer, then blockchain is the economic layer of the agent economy.' OKX's goal is not to chase a trend but to lay the foundation for an economic era yet to come — where a person with the best agents can become a world-class company.
