AI assistants can already summarize documents, answer questions, and write code. Wish Wu believes the next step is far bigger: AI agents that hold assets, make payments, and manage money on t
AI assistants can already summarize documents, answer questions, and write code. Wish Wu believes the next step is far bigger: AI agents that hold assets, make payments, and manage money on their own.
Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Pharos Network, a programmable financial Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for real-world assets (RWAs) and open financial applications. Backed by Hack VC and Faction VC, Pharos positions itself as fully decentralized and credibly neutral, designed to unify Web2 and Web3 capital flows and make real-world asset finance, long the preserve of institutions, accessible to builders, users, and communities at internet scale. Wu is also one of the driving forces behind the RealFi Alliance, an ecosystem initiative that brings together institutional asset issuers, financial infrastructure providers, and onchain builders. His thesis is simple to state and sweeping in its implications: the world is heading toward an economy populated by billions of AI agents, and the financial system they will need does not yet exist.
“If billions of AI agents become part of the economy, I believe the biggest change for ordinary people will be convenience,” Wu says. “Today, people still spend a lot of time searching, comparing, and making decisions by themselves. In the future, much of this work could be handled by personal AI agents.”
He offers an example most travellers will recognize. Instead of juggling multiple apps to plan a holiday, “you could simply tell your AI agent: ‘Plan a family vacation with a budget of $1,500.’ The agent could compare flights, book hotels, arrange insurance, and complete payments automatically based on your preferences.”
Over time, Wu argues, “AI agents may become a new interface for the digital economy, just as smartphones became the main interface for the internet.”
For all the hype around AI, Wu is clear-eyed about where the technology stands today. “Most AI agents today are still task assistants,” he says. “They can answer questions or automate workflows, but they cannot yet participate independently in economic activities.”
Closing that gap, in his view, requires several missing pieces. Agents need identity, so that other participants in a network know who an agent represents and what it is allowed to do. They need to be able to own and manage assets securely, and to make programmable payments without a human approving every transaction. They need trusted execution environments so their actions are transparent and verifiable. And they need reputation and accountability systems so that users and institutions can evaluate risk.
This is the gap the RealFi Alliance was created to fill. “By bringing together institutional asset issuers, financial infrastructure providers, and onchain builders, we are creating an ecosystem that AI agents can interact with real-world financial assets in a secure and compliant way,” Wu explains.
An obvious question follows: why can’t AI agents simply plug into existing banking and payment systems? Wu’s answer is that those systems were built around a different kind of user.
“Traditional financial systems were designed for humans,” he says. “They assume that people open accounts, approve transactions, and interact with financial institutions directly. But AI agents operate very differently. In the future, billions of agents may need to transact with each other continuously, paying for data, purchasing services, rebalancing portfolios, or allocating capital in real time. Existing banking systems were not built for this kind of machine-to-machine economy.”
Blockchain infrastructure, he argues, offers what banks cannot: direct asset ownership, programmable finance through smart contracts, and global interoperability that lets agents built by different organizations in different jurisdictions transact through shared protocols. This is the layer Pharos is building. As a Layer 1 designed for RWAfi, shorthand for real-world asset finance, and cross-chain liquidity, the network aims to give both humans and machines a shared, neutral venue where tokenized assets and open financial applications can operate under transparent, programmable rules.
“Most importantly, blockchain allows economic activities to happen natively on the internet,” Wu says. “In an agent economy, we believe finance needs to be as programmable as software itself.”
Asked for a concrete example, Wu describes an autonomous treasury agent working for a crypto-native startup that holds its capital in stablecoins. The agent continuously monitors cash balances, market conditions, yield opportunities, and upcoming expenses, then acts within policies the company defines. It might allocate idle USDC into institutional-grade yield products, shift liquidity between DeFi protocols, or keep reserves topped up for payroll.
Crucially, it also watches for danger. “If market volatility increases or collateral ratios fall below predefined thresholds, it could automatically reduce exposure, repay debt, or move assets into lower-risk strategies,” Wu says.
Eventually, he adds, the same agent could tap tokenized real-world assets such as private credit or treasury products, exactly the class of instruments Pharos was built to bring onchain. The network’s newly announced Axil Prime Credit Vault illustrates the point: a $100 million USDC vault giving onchain depositors access to institutional private credit, targeting a yield of around 14.3% from real-world credit cash flows.
“For users, the value is better capital efficiency, lower operational overhead, and continuous financial optimization that operates 24 hours a day. This is where we see RealFi becoming particularly powerful, bringing institutional-grade capital markets onchain and making them accessible to both humans and AI agents.”
Pharos is already putting that thesis into practice with the Axil Prime Credit Vault, a $100 million USDC onchain private credit strategy targeting a yield of up to roughly 14.3% APY, drawn from real-world credit cash flows rather than token emissions.
Handing an algorithm the company chequebook is a leap most people are not yet ready to make, and Wu does not pretend otherwise. “Trust is probably the biggest challenge facing the agent economy today,” he admits. “People may be comfortable asking an AI assistant to summarize a document, but they are understandably much more cautious when money is involved.”
His answer is trust built in layers: predefined permissions, spending limits, and risk parameters; decisions that are transparent and auditable; and execution that can be independently verified rather than trusted as a black box. He also expects adoption to be gradual. “Just as people did not immediately trust online banking twenty years ago, users will likely begin by delegating low-risk tasks to AI agents before allowing them to manage more complex financial activities.”
Notably, Wu resists the framing of machines taking over. “The future is not about fully autonomous agents replacing humans,” he says. “It is about creating systems where humans and AI collaborate safely, with humans always remaining in control of important decisions.”
Critics argue that the industry is building infrastructure for a market that has yet to prove it exists. Wu has heard the charge before. “I understand the skepticism,” he says. “Every major technology cycle goes through a period when infrastructure appears to move faster than applications. However, history shows that foundational infrastructure often needs to be built before large-scale adoption can happen. The internet required broadband networks before streaming platforms emerged. Smartphones required app stores before entirely new business models became possible.”
And he points to signals that demand is already here: enterprises deploying agents in production across financial services, customer support, and software development; the rapid growth of agent frameworks and interoperability standards such as MCP; and stablecoin settlement volumes reaching meaningful scale globally.
“So I do not see this as a technology searching for a problem,” he says. “Rather, I see it as infrastructure being built in anticipation of a market that is already starting to emerge.”
What would convince Wu that the agent economy has truly gone mainstream? He names three milestones: ordinary people using personal AI agents as naturally as they use smartphones; measurable economic output that can be attributed to agents acting autonomously; and mature regulatory and institutional frameworks covering agent identity, accountability, and compliance.
“Ultimately, I believe the defining moment will come when AI agents are no longer viewed as software tools, but as economic actors that can safely participate in global commerce,” he says.
Whether that moment arrives in five years or fifteen, Wu, Pharos Network, and the RealFi Alliance are betting that when the machines are ready to transact, the rails will already be built.
More information on Pharos Network is available at pharos.xyz.
Disclaimer: This content is meant to inform and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author’s personal opinions and do not represent Times Tabloid’s opinion. Readers are advised to conduct thorough research before making any investment decisions. Any action taken by the reader is strictly at their own risk. Times Tabloid is not responsible for any financial losses.
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