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SOL Franklin Templeton executives: Autonomous AI agents are reshaping the economic flow model
Sandy Kaul, director of digital assets and innovation business at Franklin Templeton, pointed out that autonomous artificial intelligence agents are fundamentally changing the way economic activity flows, and traditional payment infrastructure is no longer able to adapt to this change.
Limitations of traditional payment systems
The core of the problem lies in economic costs. Traditional card networks charge a handling fee of about 2% to 3% for each transaction, plus a fixed amount of fees, which makes small and micro transactions between machines commercially impossible. In addition, card online settlement takes 1 to 3 working days, while the transaction speed of software agents is measured in seconds, and the cost is almost zero. The traditional settlement cycle is completely out of touch with it. The traditional payment system with high fees and slow settlement obviously cannot meet the needs of micro-payment.
AI agents also face a more fundamental obstacle: they cannot open bank accounts and obtain financial services that require strict KYC certification. Kaul believes that the blockchain network just fills this gap-blockchain can settle transactions of less than 1 cent at a second speed and automatically record them, which is naturally suitable for an agent-driven economic system. She specifically pointed out that networks such as Solana, Aptos and BNB Chain already have this capability, which can settle transactions much faster than Visa's network in 1 to 3 business days.
On-chain data has confirmed the trend
On-chain data already shows this trend. The x402 protocol, incubated by Coinbase and Cloudflare and now managed by the Linux Foundation, has processed approximately 109 million transactions since its launch in May 2025, with an adjusted transaction volume of approximately US$15 million. In this agreement, the average payment amount is less than 1 cent, while the fixed fee for traditional card networks far exceeds the payment itself.
A joint report by Visa and Artemis,"Agency Payments Starting from scratch", views this moment as a turning point. The report pointed out that AI agents are triggering fundamental changes in business, but current infrastructure shortcomings limit mainstream applications. From a macro standard, trading volume is still limited, but trading frequency reveals a different picture: the amount is extremely small and the frequency is extremely high.
For investors, Kaul's core views are strategic. It is estimated that the size of agency businesses may reach US$3 to US$5 trillion by 2030, and the strategy of simply purchasing shares of AI-related companies may not be able to fully capture this opportunity as investing in the underlying blockchain infrastructure.
