Key Takeaways
- Grayscale sees potential major AI crypto winners within five years.
- AI tokens gained 54% in September, versus 24% for the broader market.
- NEAR led the highlighted projects with a 183% monthly increase.
A $15B Segment Outpaces the Broader Crypto Market
Investors are showing greater interest in blockchain services supporting artificial intelligence, according to an Oct. 2 analysis by Zach Pandl, head of research at digital asset manager Grayscale. He linked September’s outperformance to the emerging economy of software agents, programs that perform tasks and transact on users’ behalf.
The firm’s thesis centers on blockchain infrastructure for AI within a segment worth roughly $15 billion, the smallest of its six crypto sectors. Its monthly gain exceeded the broader market’s increase by 30 percentage points. Pandl wrote:
“We believe the AI sector could produce one or more major winners over the next five years.”
The argument centers on public blockchains complementing AI development that remains concentrated among a handful of companies. Potential applications include agent payments, identity, verifiable records, and private computing, which protects sensitive information during processing. The analysis interprets the rally as growing recognition of those uses.
NEAR’s 183% Gain Leads Four Highlighted Tokens
The projects highlighted by Grayscale span several functions, from paying automated workers to distinguishing people from AI-generated activity. Alongside NEAR’s September gain, Venice’s VVV rose 70%, World’s WLD advanced 47%, and Bittensor’s TAO increased 37%, according to the analysis.
NEAR, co-founded by a researcher behind the transformer architecture used in modern AI models, supports automated commerce. NEAR AI introduced its AI Agent Market on Feb. 4, allowing software to bid on tasks, complete assignments, and receive NEAR payments. Users select a proposal and fund payment held until the work is completed.
Bittensor connects specialized networks covering data, computing, agents, and inference, the process of using a trained model to generate results. World, co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, focuses on proving that a participant is human. Grayscale describes Venice’s chatbot application as providing private access to models without storing users’ prompts or responses.
Investment exposure to these services also appears in Grayscale’s Decentralized AI Fund allocations. Its August rebalance retained NEAR and Bittensor alongside Render, a distributed graphics processing network, and Filecoin, a decentralized storage network. The fund is a separate investment product from the sector index.
Automated Commerce Brings Verification and Security Challenges
The services behind these tokens address practical requirements when software purchases resources or coordinates work across platforms. AI agents and AI crypto tokens support programmable transactions and access to digital services. Payment tools allow programs to pay for work, while identity systems and shared records help establish who acted.
Verification becomes more complex as automated systems interact across different services and organizations, making traceable activity relevant to coordination. Rodrigo Coelho, CEO of blockchain development company Edge and Node, argued in an October 2025 interview that blockchain infrastructure for autonomous agents could make actions auditable. He identified transaction capacity and shared reputation systems as scaling challenges.
Financial access also introduces operational risks, illustrated by experiments with AI agents using cryptocurrency through Openclaw, an open-source automation framework. Deployments included trading, transfers between blockchains, and service purchases. A February account described exposed credentials, unauthorized actions, and financial losses when these systems interacted with financial tools.
