蓝狐
蓝狐|1月 11, 2026 01:59
The recent development of AI agents reminds us of some theories by economist Coase (also a Nobel laureate), which may provide important insights for investment in the coming years. One of the most important insights of economist Coase is centered around "transaction costs" and "coordination costs" (as discussed in his works "The Nature of the Firm" and "The Problem of Social Costs"). And combining these with today's AI agents, especially encrypted AI agents, would be very interesting. Why does this organizational form of enterprise exist? In Coase's view, this is because conducting transactions (such as contract negotiations, supervision and enforcement, and information search) under pure market mechanisms incurs expensive transaction and social costs (such as price discovery, negotiation terms, and prevention of opportunism). The advantage of enterprises is to internalize these transactions, as there is hierarchical authority to replace the transaction costs of the free market, thus reducing coordination costs. If a company hires employees, it does not need to sign contracts for every task, but can directly issue orders to execute them. There is a balance here, if the internal coordination cost is lower than the market transaction cost, the enterprise will expand; On the contrary, enterprises will narrow their boundaries and turn to outsourcing or market procurement, which forms the "scale and boundaries of the enterprise". If the transaction cost is zero, then resources will be automatically allocated to the most efficient place, regardless of the initial property rights. In reality, transaction costs are high, so institutions or organizations (legal or corporate) are needed to minimize these costs. In other words, transaction costs/social costs are one of the bottlenecks hindering economic development. For example, the delay in coordination is a serious hindrance to economic development. Enterprises invest a lot of time and effort in waiting for approval, handover, searching and obtaining information, developing and supervising implementation, preventing fraud or breach of contract, and not just in product production. All of these have greatly slowed down the speed of economic development. Some even believe that one of the main obstacles to current economic development is not production capacity, but rather the high transaction and social costs. And a large part of transaction costs and social costs involve trust and consensus, which is where encryption and AI agents can play a role. AI agents can reduce external coordination costs and promote the prosperity of the automated "task market" by standardizing protocols (identity/payment/verification), which means transforming work from internal roles within the enterprise to market-oriented tasks. This is consistent with Coase's idea that when external transaction/coordination costs decrease, business boundaries will shrink and more economic activities will shift towards the market (outsourcing or task market). If external task execution becomes cheaper and faster, companies will tend to reduce internal work and turn to external free markets for services, otherwise they will ultimately be eliminated. What insights can we gain from this trend 1. Enterprise restructuring, some smart companies will break down their work into task streams instead of traditional employee role orientation, thereby reducing costs, enhancing competitiveness, and no longer being confined to external or internal service providers, but seeking people who can solve tasks faster and cheaper. Even if AI agents cannot achieve general intelligence, they can still perform limited tasks, handle repetitive events, and reduce coordination delays. In the coming years, as the model continues to improve, execution costs may be lower than transaction costs and social costs. Agents can greatly reduce transaction costs and social coordination costs through standardized protocols such as ERC8004 identity system, x402/AP2 payment, a2a coordination, etc. On a large scale, this will greatly promote the development of productivity. On a small scale, from the perspective of investing and making money, we should attach importance to the development of AI agent economies, the native innovation of encrypted AI agents, and the market economy participants of encrypted AI agents. The cryptocurrency market is not without new narratives, but rather, it is brewing. The birth of super individuals is no longer an imagination, but will become a reality in the coming years.
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