Avalanche Treasury CEO says AI agents could strain L1 blockspace as finance moves toward 24/5 trading

Avalanche Treasury CEO Bart Smith said AI agents entering financial markets at scale could put heavy pressure on Layer 1 blockchains, arguing that blockspace should no longer be treated as effectively unlimited. Speaking at Avalanche Summit in New York and in comments to The Block, Smith said that even a relatively conservative level of AI-driven market activity would still translate into a large volume of automated transactions settling onchain, pushing existing capacity closer to its limits. Smith also said he would be surprised if traditional financial markets had not shifted to 24/5 trading by mid-2027. In his view, current financial infrastructure is not built to handle round-the-clock activity, which would require new systems rather than upgrades to legacy rails. He argued those systems would be built on blockchain infrastructure. He added that once blockspace becomes scarce, technical differences among Layer 1 networks such as Solana, Avalanche and Ethereum will matter more to institutions and AI agents, especially in throughput, latency, fee design and sharding architecture. The report also noted Smith’s background at Susquehanna Crypto and his current role at Avalanche Treasury Company, which it said took shape as Avalanche expanded its institutional and RWA efforts.