The metaverse isn't a place: Why Animoca’s Yat Siu says the future is 100 billion AI agents

Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu told Consensus 2026 that the next phase of the metaverse will be driven by autonomous AI agents transacting on blockchains rather than humans inhabiting immersive virtual worlds. He predicted 50–100 billion AI agents handling bookings, payments and commerce on-chain, argued that agents could solve crypto’s onboarding problem, and announced a $10 million Animoca Minds fund for developers building agent applications. Market implications include potential large-scale machine-driven on‑chain activity that could increase demand for wallets, tokens, decentralized identity and payments infrastructure, shifting blockchain growth from retail human users to automated agent-driven transactions.