Eliza Labs, the developer behind ai16z, has announced a new partnership with Stanford University’s Future of Digital Currency Initiative.
The collaboration aims to research how artificial intelligence agents can enhance decentralised finance (DeFi) and Web3 systems.
The joint research will utilise Eliza Labs’ open-source AI agent framework, Eliza.
According to the announcement on Dec. 16, the focus will be on understanding how AI agents can build trust, coordinate actions, and make decisions within decentralised financial networks.
The project will kick off in 2025, with primary research areas including “developing new frameworks for how autonomous agents establish and verify trust within digital currency networks” and “investigating how agents interact and coordinate in economic contexts.”
Stanford Professors Dan Boneh and David Mazières described the partnership as a “unique opportunity to shape how AI agents will interact within digital economies.”
The Future of Digital Currency Initiative is dedicated to exploring the technical, legal, and economic challenges and opportunities posed by digital currencies.
Eliza is the AI agent framework powering ai16z, a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) designed to make on-chain trading and investment decisions.
ai16z’s native token, AI16Z, has a market capitalisation of approximately $850 million since its October launch.
As of Dec. 16, ai16z manages around $15 million, and dozens of projects are already using Eliza-based AI agents.
Since October 2024, AI-themed memecoins have surged in popularity, with a combined market capitalisation of over $3 billion.
These developments suggest that AI and blockchain technology may significantly reshape Web3, facilitating greater interaction between autonomous AI agents and human users within digital economies.