Masumi Network: Blockchain and AI Integration Promises Trust in the Expanding Agent Economy

By 2026, enterprises are expected to be deploying large numbers of AI agents across various roles and functions. As organisations race to harness these autonomous systems, questions surrounding governance, trust, and coordination are coming into sharp focus.

Analyst group IDC recently forecast that by 2030, up to 20% of the world's largest organisations could encounter lawsuits, hefty fines, or even the dismissal of Chief Information Officers due to disruptions arising from poorly governed AI agents. Ensuring robust controls and verifiable trust within this burgeoning ecosystem is viewed as a critical challenge for the next decade.

Against this backdrop, Patrick Tobler, founder and CEO of blockchain infrastructure provider NMKR, has partnered with Serviceplan Group to develop the Masumi Network. Launched in late 2024, the Masumi Network offers a framework-agnostic infrastructure designed to empower developers to build autonomous AI agents that can collaborate, monetize services, and maintain auditable trust.

"The core thesis of Masumi is that there’s going to be billions of different AI agents from different companies interacting with each other in the future," said Tobler. The central issue is enabling these agents, often operating on behalf of competing organisations, to transact and collaborate seamlessly and securely.

Consider the example of travel planning for a business trip: an AI agent handling hotel bookings needs to purchase a plane ticket from an airline’s AI agent. Masumi envisions a system where such interactions take place autonomously—without intermediaries or manual oversight—secured by blockchain.

"Masumi is a decentralised network of agents, so it’s not relying on any centralised payment infrastructure," Tobler explained. "Instead, agents are equipped with wallets and can send stablecoins from one agent to another and, because of that, interacting with each other in a completely safe and trustless manner."

Tobler, with extensive experience in the cryptocurrency sector, believes the technology's strengths have been pointed at the wrong demographic. "Crypto and blockchains, with their complex user experience, are challenging for people," he noted. "But for software agents, who don’t care about ease of use, blockchain is an ideal backbone. Agents can interact with thousands or millions of other agents with trust guaranteed by code rather than human oversight."

With the anticipated proliferation of automated agents acting on behalf of humans and organisations, the problems of interoperability, payment, and verification may be best solved through established blockchain techniques—just not for human users, but for agents themselves.

NMKR, initially built on the Cardano blockchain—a prominent player in the decentralised ledger space with a strong European presence—continues to leverage Cardano for Masumi. Tobler, who recently attended the AI & Big Data Expo Global in London as part of Discover Cardano’s delegation, looks forward to engaging with businesses keen to move beyond superficial AI adoption.

"Most often, the thing missing from traditional tech startups is actually talking to the people who would use these systems every day," Tobler said. By combining blockchain’s secure decentralised infrastructure with rapidly advancing AI, Masumi Network aims to bridge this gap, encouraging broad and safe adoption of autonomous agents across industries.

As European enterprises continue their digital transformation, and governing bodies debate AI regulation, Masumi’s approach highlights a potential path forward: fusing proven decentralised finance infrastructure with the agility and intelligence of AI agents, building a foundation of trust for tomorrow’s autonomous economy.

For more details, see the full article at Artificial Intelligence News.