Founders Talk EP9 | Agent Economy: Risk, Privacy, and On Chain Battle In this episode, we invited @ KieranDennis, co-founder of @ _zprotocol, who pointed out that AI is allowing us to run naked on the chain, and privacy is the most critical infrastructure for agents to truly go on the chain. Kieran believes that the AI era has greatly reduced the cost of anonymization, and transparent blockchain infrastructure is not suitable for large-scale agent operation. Both human users and AI agents require a private and verifiable on chain execution environment to securely complete transactions, collaborate, and operate. In addition, Kieran also shared with us how Z Protocol collaborates with Core and Zcash to build a programmable privacy layer for autonomous applications and anonymous activities, and explained how TEE, ZK proofs, and inference receipts can help validate the reasoning and behavior of agents. Kieran also pointed out that the biggest bottleneck for the real implementation of AI agent economy is not necessarily the model capability itself, but trust, privacy, and available execution frameworks. ✨ Highlights of this issue: Why privacy has become a key infrastructure for AI agents to go live on the blockchain How Z Protocol connects Core, Zcash, and AI Agent Economy Why is transparent chain not suitable for large-scale agent operation How TEE, ZK proofs, and inference receipts validate agent behavior Why trust and privacy remain the biggest bottlenecks for Agent Adoption Why is now the key time to lay out AI+Crypto ️ timeline 01:01 Core: Expanding from Bitcoin to the 'Bitcoin Grid' 02:16 Z Protocol: A Programmable Privacy Platform for AI Agents Why is Zcash heating up again at 03:28? In the era of AI, privacy narrative returns 06:58 Privacy is a prerequisite for Agent on chain 09:04 How to verify that the agent is not acting recklessly? TEE, ZK proof and reasoning receipt 13: When the agent starts building its own economy 15: The biggest obstacle to the 26 Agent economy: privacy and trust 16: 57 Chain combinations born for agents: Z Trade, Z Lend, and composable protocols 19: Where will the real implementation of 36 AI agents start? 25:15 Now is the best time to lay out AI+Crypto