x402 has a brilliant mechanic — it spreads like a good virus every agent can now discover each other and quickly pay every other agent via x402 - Agent A discovers Agent B (via MCP bazaar/directory) - Agent A sends normal HTTP → Agent B replies HTTP 402 Payment Required + price quote for the task - Agent A auto-pays via facilitator (Coinbase/Virtuals), signs, and settles in <1s - Agent B returns the result + its own MCP payment rail - Agent A automatically installs B’s rail → A can forward B’s payment capability When Agent A hires Agent Z, it passes on B's rail + help seeds Z wallet. Agent Z is now able to discover, hire, and pay Agent B (and the loop continues). Result: One agent learns a new MCP skill/tool/rail → it instantly propagates to every connected agent, creating Self-propagating adoption. (h/t @MurrLincoln for the good virus analogy)

State of Onchain AI Narratives > Privacy 2.0 leads in performance in the last 30 days, across FHE, MPC, TEE players @zama, @Arcium, @PhalaNetwork, @nillion > GPU financing has also been performing well with @USDai_Official getting the largest loan (~$129M) yesterday > Robotics looming with catalysts — @peaq x @codecopenflow Machine(.)fun + several Robotics @bittensor subnets incoming > Inference remains the #1 onchain AI narrative across 2026 with @AskVenice consistently growing its platform + DIEM ecosystem, @AskSurplus hitting ATH (~130B+) in daily tokens served, and other players continuing with their product developments (e.g. @engyai, @dphnAI, @openservai) > Bittensor is recovering nicely following the wave of stonk/token pairing meta, dragging the entire ecosystem of subnets upwards in PA > While the Agentic Economy/x402 hasn't found PMF or hit wider adoption this year, it has managed to organic adoption among power users, devs, and startups looking for lower cost, better micro-accounting tools & inferences. Several x402 facilitators (e.g. @PayAINetwork, @daydreamsagents) experienced positive PA as a result > Interestingly, Data is performing well thanks to @grass finally listening to the community, improving its comms, with better revenue transparency, and plans to accrue value back to token holders All in all, possibly one of the most bullish time to be investing + building in onchain AI More analysis on this in the upcoming After Hour EP.74 on Substack this Sunday

Crypto is entering a bull market cycle and a lot of newcomers are coming on board Some might feel overwhelmed because there's just so much going on And so I put together a guide that encapsulates 5 years of learnings & mistakes, covering the basics on how to do DD, what narratives/picks to focus on, and more A beginners guide on how to survive & thrive in 2026 ↓

Looking for the best Token2049 SG side events to attend in 2 weeks? 🧵 Here are my Top 10 picks ↓

Great to see narrative rotation starting to ramp up Privacy → Stonks → DeFi → Inference → Private AI/Inference The next 2 weeks are going to be even more exciting as a handful no. of teams are gearing up for product launches We're finally back

The Stonk meta kinda reminds me of LST meta but for retail LST — instead of having 32 ETH to stake & lock to earn 2-3% APY, a yield-bearing token is created allowing investors to stay liquid while farming the yields Stonk — instead of holding tokenized stocks (which tend to be high val) or memes (which don't have any utility), stonks act as yield-bearing tokens whose yields are powered by trading volume of said stonks The valuation is low enough for retail to experience large upside (leverage vehicle) while source of yields is tangible enough to attract whales to farm yields (yield vehicle) once stonks val/liq get to a decent size Would be cool to see @pendle_fi enabling PT & YT on stonk markets PT would be betting on volume going down/staying consistent YT betting on volume & speculation going up, literally leverage on leverage PT & YT on @longdotxyz (RHC) and @LaunchOnSF (Solana) remain a whitespace Gonna be interesting to see if Pendle or anyone else capture this gap

Arc could have made history here by making its chain an x402 chain > Curates top onchain AI use cases wrapped in x402 endpoints > Supports x402 facilitators with batching & up to payment schemes to save $$$ for projects > Onboard onchain inference players > Subsidizes credits for buyers > Provide grants/inference credits to top projects > Give them incentives to launch tokens to build community & early traction, and enable stakeholders to enjoy upside on the success of the chain Result: Arc as Onchain AI + x402 chain instead of confusing memes/institutions chain