MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Crypto wallets are being rebuilt for AI agents, executives at Trust Wallet and Mesh said Thursday, with companies racing to give self-driving software a way to hold value, prove identity and conduct on-chain transactions.
Arjun Mukherjee, chief technology officer of Mesh, at CoinDesk Miami, said the change is driven by what he called the cold start problem for AI agents.
“An agent can’t do anything until they have a funded wallet,” he said. “It’s very difficult for the agent to act until they have a wallet to do something and they have value to transact. And all of a sudden, they get into cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies have found their kind of niche, their killer application.”
Mesh, which creates a connectivity layer between exchanges, wallets, smart contracts and decentralized exchanges, has launched a product called Smart Funding that routes payments across chains, networks, accounts and tokens to human users and agents.
Felix Fan, CEO of Trust Wallet, said the company is taking a deliberately bifurcated approach to agent integration. In its consumer crypto app, where users hold the keys, agents act as co-pilot to simplify navigation and reduce friction without taking custodial control.
“Users always have the keys and all these permissions. At every step, they have to give their consent,” Fan said. The role of the consumer-side agent is to “speed up the process and also help them better understand how to navigate the chain.”
On the developer side, Trust Wallet has taken a more aggressive stance. The company recently launched an agent kit that allows agents to perform on-chain transactions, transfers, and other actions autonomously, and is implementing EIP-8004, an Ethereum proposal that provides agents with on-chain identity and credit-style scoring.
“On the crypto applications side, we are allowing humans to have superpowers with AI, while on the developer side, we are allowing agents to do something like humans,” Fan said.
As for where the responsibility lies, Mukherjee said Mesh is wary of importing the friction of traditional finance into agent payments.
“AI should augment human judgment, not replace human responsibility,” he said, adding that responsibility for an agent’s actions lies with the institution that deploys him.
Both panelists said they expect AI labs to launch their own wallets. X has already talked about X Money, Fan noted, and “It’s very likely that Grok has a wallet inside.”
“Claude and all these players will be able to function on the chain maybe tomorrow,” Fan said. “So we’re open to that challenge.”
Mukherjee said Mesh’s strategy is to remain wallet, network and token agnostic.
“If Web3-based e-commerce exists on any network, on any token, and on any connected fund, we all win,” he said.
