Crypto wallets are being redesigned around AI agents, according to executives from Trust Wallet and Mesh speaking at Consensus in Miami. The race is centered on a simple need: giving autonomous software a way to hold value, prove identity and transact on-chain.
Arjun Mukherjee, CTO of Mesh, said the shift starts with what he called the cold-start problem for AI agents. In his view, an agent cannot do much until it has a funded wallet. Without a wallet, it cannot act; without value inside that wallet, it cannot transact. That gap is where crypto becomes useful.
Smart Funding targets the agent onboarding bottleneck
Mesh builds a connectivity layer linking exchanges, wallets, smart contracts and decentralized exchanges. The company has introduced a product called Smart Funding, which routes payments across chains, networks, accounts and tokens for both human users and AI agents.
Mukherjee said Mesh intends to stay agnostic across wallets, networks and tokens. As he described it, if Web3-based commerce can happen on any network with any token and any connected source of funds, the whole ecosystem benefits.
Trust Wallet splits its strategy between users and developers
Trust Wallet CEO Felix Fan said the company is taking a two-track approach to agent integration. In its consumer crypto app, where users keep control of their own keys, agents act more like copilots. Their job is to reduce friction and simplify navigation, not to take over custody.
Fan said users retain the keys and the permissions, and consent is required at each step. In that setting, the agent is there to speed up the process and help users better understand how to operate on blockchain networks.
On the developer side, Trust Wallet is moving faster. The company recently released an agent kit that allows agents to autonomously carry out swaps, transfers and other on-chain actions. It is also implementing EIP-8004, an Ethereum proposal designed to give agents on-chain identity and credit-style scoring.
Liability remains with the institution deploying the agent
On accountability, Mukherjee said Mesh is careful about importing the friction of traditional finance into agent payments. He said AI should complement human judgment rather than replace human responsibility or accountability, and that liability for an agent’s actions sits with the institution that deploys it.
Both speakers said they expect AI labs to launch their own wallets. Fan pointed to X Money as a public example from X and said Grok is likely to have a built-in wallet. He also said Claude and other participants may be able to operate on-chain as soon as tomorrow.