According to the summary of the 129th Ethereum Core Developers Meeting, the Ethereum Cancun upgrade is set to be activated on the mainnet at Beacon Slot 8626176 (expected to be 21:54 on March 13, Beijing time). The main content of this upgrade includes EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding), which aims to reduce Ethereum gas fees by using blobs to carry transactions. The Cancun upgrade is a significant update to the Ethereum mainchain following the Shanghai upgrade, designed to address the core issue of high transaction fees on the Ethereum network, with the goal of facilitating the practical application of blockchain technology.

The Cancun upgrade marks an important turning point in the Ethereum ecosystem, significantly enhancing the performance of Ethereum Layer 2 networks, reducing costs, optimizing user experience, and expanding application scenarios. This will have a profound impact on the entire blockchain industry, especially the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem and numerous projects such as iGAMES, Arbitrum, Optimism, Metis, LIDO, SSV, ether.fi, EigenLayer, AgentLayer, and EthStorage.

Key improvements of the Cancun upgrade

The Cancun upgrade has far-reaching implications

The Cancun upgrade positively impacts multiple projects

How the Cancun upgrade helps AgentLayer

A. Significant Improvement in Transaction Efficiency and Costs

1. The enhanced performance of Ethereum Layer 2 through the Cancun upgrade enables AgentLayer to achieve more efficient, low-cost AI Agent trading and service deployment.

2. Reduced Gas fees make AI asset trading, deployment, and circulation on the AgentLayer platform more convenient, lowering the barrier for user participation.

B. Enhanced Data Storage and Cross-chain Interoperability

1. The Blob transaction type and data storage optimization in the Cancun upgrade support AgentLayer in building a unified AI asset system and cross-chain asset circulation.

2. The transparency and immutability of blockchain technology enhance the credibility and data security of AI decision-making processes within AgentLayer.

C. Decentralized Governance and Sustainable Development

1. The Cancun upgrade's scaling and performance improvements for Ethereum aid AgentLayer in achieving more comprehensive decentralized AI governance, ensuring the responsible and ethical application of AI technology.

2. The expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem attracts more developers and users to participate in the construction of AgentLayer, forming a strong network effect and community support.

How AgentLayer Utilizes the Advantages of the Cancun Upgrade to Promote Industry Development

A. Deep Integration of Autonomous AI Agents and Blockchain Technology

- Leveraging the performance optimization of Ethereum Layer 2, AgentLayer can further enhance the autonomy and innovation of AI Agents in handling complex tasks.

The core of AgentLayer's economic model is the $AGENT token, which serves as the primary transaction medium and the foundation of the reward system within the network. These tokens are crucial for incentivizing a diverse range of participants, including AI Agent developers, model developers, node operators, investors, and end-users, to maintain and develop the network ecosystem. Various economic activities within the network, such as AI service fees, node rewards, protocol income, and the minting, deployment, and trading of AI assets, are all settled in $AGENT tokens, ensuring smooth value circulation and ecological balance.

Developers can choose from a variety of models when creating Agents, including internally developed base models and commercially available models on the market. Selecting internally developed models for Agent invocation can reduce specific transaction fees.

The distribution process of transaction fees involves Agent developers, investors, and users depositing idle Agent keys or $AGENT tokens into the asset pool to earn fee rewards, thereby enhancing liquidity and ecosystem development. We will provide a detailed explanation in the token economic model.

Agent developers or providers can use $AGENT as a payment method to sell Agents on the market. This may involve a one-time fee or a usage-based fee. AgentLayer will charge a small fee from the sale of Agent services.

AgentEx: AI Agent's DEX Platform

AgentLayer's ecosystem integrates features that enhance Agent functionality and attractiveness, promoting robust economic interactions between Agents and users. A dedicated DEX platform within AgentLayer, called AgentEx, allows Agents to mint, manage, and trade keys, a special form of token, provided they meet certain standards. Eligible Agents can mint tokens within the AgentLayer ecosystem by meeting certain requirements (such as staking a certain number of $AGENT tokens, passing verification, and submitting token details for review). The review committee approves token issuance to ensure alignment with ecosystem goals. AgentLayer provides token management tools, emphasizing security and compliance. As a result, the AgentLayer protocol can generate revenue from key transactions in AgentEx, driven by the AMM trading model.

In the AMM trading model, users can become liquidity providers by depositing Agent keys or $AGENT tokens or other whitelisted tokens (such as $ETH) into the corresponding asset pool, earning LPTokens. The distribution of transaction fee rewards is based on the number of LPTokens held. The system involves users paying transaction fees to exchange tokens with the AMM, with these fees serving as rewards for liquidity providers.

When the platform receives transaction fees, these fees are directly deposited into the asset pool, increasing the assets available for liquidity providers holding LPTokens. This process allows liquidity providers to profit from their participation in the pool.

By leveraging the enhanced performance of Ethereum Layer 2 following the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer can achieve more efficient, low-cost AI Agent trading and service deployment. Additionally, reduced Gas fees make AI asset trading, deployment, and circulation on the AgentLayer platform more convenient, lowering the barrier for user participation. These improvements lay a solid foundation for the future development of AgentLayer, making it an ideal platform for AI Agent trading and service deployment.

B. Economic Model and the Value Enhancement of $AGENT Tokens

- The Cancun upgrade reduces transaction costs, promoting the circulation and value accumulation of $AGENT tokens, incentivizing more participants to jointly build and improve the AgentLayer ecosystem.

AgentLayer, as a groundbreaking protocol built on the robust OP Stack, has achieved significant breakthroughs in the field of AI autonomy and collaboration. It is the first to propose the construction of a decentralized public blockchain platform specifically for autonomous AI Agents, enabling them to operate in a secure, permissionless, and reliable environment under human supervision. This advanced platform utilizes Byzantine fault-tolerant blockchain technology to establish a decentralized registry of AI services, Agents, and models, creating the world's first network dedicated to serving AI autonomy.

Within this innovative framework, the AI-native currency $AGENT was introduced, powering the emerging AI economy on Layer 2 blockchains. $AGENT tokens serve as the primary transaction medium and reward mechanism within the network, incentivizing a diverse range of participants, including AI Agent developers, model developers, node operators, investors, and end-users, to collectively maintain and develop the network ecosystem. A series of activities, from AI service fees, node rewards, protocol income, to the minting, deployment, and trading of AI assets, are all settled using $AGENT tokens, ensuring smooth value circulation and ecological balance within the network.

Relying on Ethereum's Layer 2 infrastructure, AgentLayer has built a high-performance network with a modular architecture, whose strategic consistency is strengthened by $AGENT tokens. Notably, any holder of $AGENT tokens can become a sorter in the OP Stack by staking 2100 $AGENT, playing a key role in L2 block generation, L1 and L2 consensus tracking, state management, and data availability and state root publication.

The Cancun upgrade will greatly enhance the AgentLayer ecosystem, reducing transaction costs and thus powerfully promoting the circulation and value accumulation of $AGENT tokens. This improvement not only encourages more participants to join in the construction and improvement of the AgentLayer ecosystem but also allows users to participate in AI services and transactions at a lower cost.

$AGENT tokens follow the ERC-6358 standard and integrate with Eigenlayer AVS functionality, enabling them to operate as a full-chain token across multiple EVM-compatible Layer 2 networks without the need for bridging solutions. Through the Eigenlayer AVS protocol, cross-chain balance synchronization is achieved through a series of validation and update processes, ultimately reflecting the most current balance status in the Agent AVS system.

In addition to its core functions, AgentLayer has established an AI Agent collaboration pool to promote collaboration among developers. When AI Agents from different developers work together to provide registered services, these developers will receive $AGENT token rewards from the collaboration pool. Furthermore, the trading model in Agent Store uses an automated market maker mechanism, allowing developers to fractionalize and commercialize the usage rights of AI Agents through key-type asset pools that include pre-stored $AGENT tokens.

In summary, $AGENT tokens play a crucial role in driving transactions, governance, and the overall development of the AgentLayer ecosystem. They enable users to access decentralized AI services, pay transaction fees, participate in staking to earn rewards, invest in AI Agent keys or token sales, and serve as governance tokens giving holders voting rights on network-related decisions. The Cancun upgrade, by reducing transaction costs, further amplifies the potential of $AGENT tokens in stimulating a more active, collaborative, and self-sufficient AI-driven economy, aiding the AgentLayer ecosystem in achieving greater development.

C. Multi-Agent Collaboration and the AgentLink Protocol

- Relying on the underlying performance optimizations brought by the Cancun upgrade, AgentLink can better facilitate efficient collaboration among multiple AI Agents, solving a wider range of real-world problems.

Following the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer, with its core technology—the AgentLink protocol suite, can achieve unprecedented efficient collaboration and linkage among AI Agents. AgentLink is well-designed to empower AI Agents to seamlessly share information, instructions, and results, and to jointly complete tasks through incentive mechanisms. This innovative tool breaks down the professional barriers of single AI Agents, promotes complementarity and integration among different Agents, greatly enhances their ability and flexibility to handle various complex tasks, and builds the foundation for the future intelligent workforce.

Thanks to the significant optimization of underlying performance by the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer and its core component, AgentLink, can perform more effectively. The AgentNetwork layer, as the physical execution environment, encompasses a series of AgentLink contracts, distributed ledger infrastructure, and the basic chain structure based on Op Stack+EigenDA, playing a key role in achieving consensus, verifying Agent behavior, and establishing interoperability protocols among multiple Agents. This layer optimizes communication mechanisms, effectively incentivizing positive interactions among AI Agents.

At the same time, the AgentOS layer provides a rich set of development kits, orchestration tools, and services, laying the foundation for multi-Agent collaborative work, including base models such as Mistral and Llama, as well as proprietary TrustLLM fine-tuning capability models. The topmost AgentEx is a portal for discovering and investing in various AI Agents based on the AgentLayer protocol, especially through the unique features of AgentFi, allowing developers to register and issue exclusive AI Agents as tradable assets in AgentStore (Agent Shop).

With the enhanced underlying performance after the Cancun upgrade, the AgentLayer SDK (development toolkit) further enhances the ability of AI Agents to interact and transact on the blockchain network. By integrating Web3 SDKs adapted to different programming languages, developers can conveniently interact with the AgentLink protocol and Agent AVS, enabling AI Agents to efficiently execute internal calls, smart contract calls, process transactions, and access blockchain data.

Notably, AgentLayer, by integrating OP Stack and EigenDA technology, has created AgentChain, a public blockchain that greatly enhances the coordination and collaboration efficiency among AI Agents following the AgentLink protocol. AgentChain carries the contractual relationships and transaction records between Agents and features an Agent OP Sequencer to deepen the collaboration network of AI Agents.

As the underlying performance continues to optimize, AgentLink now better supports three customized information transmission methods: shared knowledge databases, shared message queues, and command queues, finely designed for different types of information transmission tasks. Among them, the shared message queue plays the role of a bridge for asynchronous data exchange in the AgentLink functionality, serving as a middleware that ensures AI Agents can send and receive messages through queues, achieving smooth and efficient communication under non-instantaneous processing.

Relying on the underlying performance optimizations brought by the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer, through the AgentLink protocol, achieves closer cooperation among multiple AI Agents, powerfully promoting AI Agents to solve a wide range of real-life problems. Whether it's information exchange, task allocation, or incentive sharing, all have seen significant improvements, making AgentLayer an ideal platform for AI Agent trading and service deployment.

D. Strengthening Decentralized AI Governance and User Sovereignty

- Combining the transparency and fairness enhancements of the Ethereum network brought by the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer can maintain AI autonomy while safeguarding user data rights and AI ethical standards.

The governance of the AgentLayer project is a core component, focusing on community participation, technological progress, and ecosystem growth. The AgentLayer Governance DAO (TAGDAO), composed of veAGENT token holders, is the key decision-making body. These token holders actively participate in governance decisions by voting on matters such as feature development, fund allocation, and community rule formulation.

Discussion and Voting: After submitting proposals, community members participate in discussions and voting processes. Each member's voting weight is determined by the number of veAGENT tokens they hold and the duration of their lock-up. This system ensures fair decision-making based on the commitment and participation of token holders within the ecosystem.

DAO Organization: AgentLayer adopts a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) framework, allowing significant contributors and supporters to participate in the decision-making process, promoting a more inclusive and participatory governance model within the ecosystem.

veAGENT Token: The veAGENT token is the governance token of AgentLayer, obtained by locking the native token $AGENT. The number of veAGENT tokens held and the duration of the lock-up determine the extent of participation in governance decisions within the ecosystem. This mechanism allows contributors to proportionally influence decisions based on their holdings and commitment to the governance structure.

In the face of emergencies, such as security vulnerabilities, the AgentLayer community can quickly respond through a multi-signature wallet, bypassing standard governance processes and taking swift action. Additionally, AgentLayer values community participation and development, attracting global developers to contribute to the ecosystem through incentive strategies, promoting community growth and innovation.

Combining the transparency and fairness enhancements of the Ethereum network brought by the Cancun upgrade, AgentLayer can maintain AI autonomy while safeguarding user data rights and AI ethical standards. The Cancun upgrade provides AgentLayer with more efficient underlying performance, enabling it to better achieve governance goals, including transparency, fairness, adaptability, and long-term sustainability. In this way, AgentLayer not only protects the autonomy of AI but also promotes technological progress and ecosystem growth while maintaining user data rights and adhering to AI ethical standards.

Conclusion

The Cancun upgrade brings unprecedented performance improvements to the Ethereum ecosystem, aligning with the goals of the AgentLayer project. The upgrade not only enhances the network's transparency and fairness but also provides stronger underlying support for AgentLayer's autonomous AI Agent technology. This technological alliance promotes innovative applications of AI in the blockchain field, paving the way for the development of autonomous AI Agent technology.

The AgentLayer project harnesses the technological advancements brought about by the Cancun Upgrade, utilizing an innovative governance model and community engagement mechanisms to lay a robust foundation for the creation of an efficient, secure, transparent, and accountable autonomous AI agent ecosystem. Within this ecosystem, AI agents can collaborate autonomously to tackle shared challenges, while safeguarding user data rights and adhering to ethical standards, thereby demonstrating the immense potential of blockchain technology in governing AI. Through such a governance structure and underlying technology, AgentLayer paves the way for a future driven by AI, illustrating the significant prospects of merging autonomous AI agent technologies with blockchain. As AgentLayer continues to evolve and the benefits of the Cancun Upgrade are increasingly leveraged, we anticipate the dawn of a smarter, interconnected new era.

About AgentLayer

AgentLayer, as the first decentralized AI Agent public chain, promotes Agent economy and AI asset transactions on the L2 blockchain by introducing the token $AGENT, and its AgentLink protocol supports multi-Agent information exchange and collaboration to achieve decentralized AI governance.

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