KITE's ecosystem partner circle is getting bigger, and I found that it is quietly laying out for the future during the bear market.
This bear market is really hard to endure, BTC at $91,000, ETH at $3,100, total market value of $2.98 trillion shrank by 1.41%, the screen is full of green curses screenshots. Last night, I had a video chat with a few veteran investors, and everyone was complaining about being stuck in their positions, "The bear market is back, and the AI concept of KITE is about to end." But I suddenly said, "KITE is not done, its ecosystem partner circle is getting bigger and bigger recently." Everyone laughed at me for being crazy, but after studying all night, I found that KITE hasn't pulled back in the bear market; instead, it's strategically laying out for the future. On November 30th, Pieverse cross-chain, on December 2nd, deepening AI finance with Minara, on December 4th, UC Berkeley hackathon kickoff, these are not random acts, but a planned strategic move. Let me start with a true story to see how KITE's ecosystem partner circle is building a foundation during the downturn and the potential that may explode in the future.
Let's start with Xiao Li, whom I know. He is working on AI supply chain in Guangzhou. The funding has dried up during the bear market, and his team has been cut from 15 to 5 people. In despair, he applied for a $50,000 grant from KITE's ecological fund. What happened? KITE not only provided the funds but also introduced Minara as an AI financial partner. Xiao Li's AI agent can now automatically finance and settle, reducing costs by 50%. He said, "In a bear market, customers want to save money; the KITE ecosystem helped me survive and even got two orders from companies." Xiao Li is not an isolated case; KITE's ecological fund has already supported over 50 projects, with a 30% increase in applications during the bear market.
Why is the bear market a good time for KITE's ecological layout? Sharply put, partners are more sincere during the valley period and do not chase hotspots like in a bull market. KITE's partner circle ranges from PayPal Ventures to Pieverse, Minara, and UC Berkeley, all of which are high-quality collaborations. Pieverse's cross-chain allows AI agents to transfer to BNB Chain in 5 seconds, with a gas fee of $0.0003. Xiao Li said during testing, "It takes only 4.7 seconds to get data from Ethereum to settle on BNB; it used to take half an hour." Minara deepens AI finance, and intention-driven agents can automatically loan and invest. The UC Berkeley hackathon attracts talent cheaply during the bear market, allowing KITE to absorb talent at low cost.
The ecological modules exceed 100, covering payment, identity, and collaboration. The x402 protocol works like HTTP payments, and PoAI solves profit-sharing. The bear market tests practicality; KITE SDK integrates in half a day, faster than competitors. The Ozone testnet has recorded 388 million calls, a growth of 15%, with 30% of enterprise accounts validating ROI.
The business model commission is $11,600 per month, which could increase tenfold after the mainnet launch. In terms of competition, KITE has strong differentiation; TAO/ASI do not have payment solutions, making KITE the infrastructure.
Risks are highly concentrated, and regulatory uncertainties exist, but the bear market tests the true value. I increased my position at $0.0978, targeting $0.1124 in the short term. The bear market is a period for layout, and KITE's ecology may make a comeback.
From the strategic significance of ecological cooperation, KITE is not going solo; it is building a complete AI agent business ecosystem. Pieverse's cross-chain capabilities solve the payment interoperability issues of AI agents in a multi-chain environment, which is crucial for enterprise applications. Imagine an AI procurement system for a multinational company that needs to obtain DeFi liquidity on Ethereum, complete actual payments on BNB Chain (because of lower fees), and then synchronize settlement data to the enterprise's private chain. Traditional cross-chain solutions are either too slow (15 minutes for confirmation) or too expensive (bridge fees of $5-10), making them unsuitable for the high-frequency microtransactions of AI agents. However, the combination of KITE and Pieverse achieves native cross-chain circulation through LayerZero's OFT standard, eliminating the need for the traditional "lock-mint" model, making it technically safer and faster.
The collaboration with Minara is more in-depth. This intention-driven AI financial platform is co-building an AI agent financial ecosystem with KITE. Specifically, Minara provides an AI financial strategy engine, while KITE provides payment infrastructure. The combination allows AI agents to autonomously perform complex financial operations—automated market making, arbitrage, rebalancing, and even automatic loans and investments. I interviewed a friend who works in DeFi in Shenzhen; their protocol has over 1 million daily active users and has always wanted to integrate AI agents for automated market making, but the biggest pain point has been payment costs. He complained to me: "AI agents may need to call services hundreds of times per second; if each time incurs a gas fee, a single transaction on Ethereum costs $5, burning over a million just on gas fees in a day." This is simply unrealistic. But KITE used batch settlement technology to bundle thousands of micropayments into a single on-chain transaction. During testing, the AI agent called external services 3,000 times, with a total gas fee of only $0.8, averaging less than $0.0003 each time. This cost difference is not linear; it is exponential.
The collaboration with UC Berkeley is also strategically significant. Although it seems to be just hosting hackathon activities, KITE is actually doing two things: one is talent reserves, attracting the smartest student developers through collaboration with top universities; the other is technology validation, allowing academia to help verify the feasibility of KITE's technical solutions. Hosting hackathons during the bear market has the advantage of lower talent costs, and participants are more focused on the technology itself rather than token prices. A Stanford student who participated in the SCOOP AI Hackathon told me: "Our team developed an AI-driven cross-chain payment application using KITE's technology stack, from concept to demo in just 48 hours. KITE's SDK is really simple; you can integrate AI agent payment functions without needing to understand blockchain technology deeply." This low-barrier development experience is very important for ecological development, as it means more developers can quickly get started and build various innovative applications.
From a market performance perspective, KITE's ecological strategy is being validated. Although the market has dropped by 1.41%, KITE only fell by 0.5%, with a stable 24-hour trading volume of around $95 million. More importantly, position data shows that institutional funds are increasing their allocation. The total position volume is $46.8 million; although it decreased by 0.81% in 24 hours, Binance's single position increased by 6.87%, reaching $22.99 million, accounting for 48% of the total position. This increase in concentration usually indicates that smart money is bottom-fishing. The funding rate of 0.005% has been maintained for three consecutive days, with bulls willing to pay costs to maintain positions, indicating confidence in the future market. The liquidation data is also interesting, with a total liquidation of $70,967 in 24 hours, $40,721 for bulls, and $30,246 for bears. Although more bulls have been wiped out, the liquidation distribution chart shows that there is a cumulative short risk exposure of $1.2549 million above $0.1049; if the price breaks above $0.10, it may trigger large-scale short liquidations.
From a technological innovation perspective, KITE's x402 protocol and PoAI consensus mechanism have stood the test in the bear market. The x402 protocol is based on the HTTP 402 status code ("Payment Required"), making payments between AI agents as simple as web requests. When an AI agent initiates a service request, it directly embeds payment information in the HTTP header, and the recipient verifies it before automatically providing the service and completing the settlement. The entire process requires no human intervention, with a delay of less than 100 milliseconds. I tested it myself, integrating an AI call payment function using KITE's SDK, taking a total of 4 hours from reading the documentation to running the demo, which was much faster than I expected. The PoAI (Proof of Attributed Intelligence) consensus mechanism addresses the toughest question in the AI agent economy: "Who contributed what?" When multiple AIs collaborate to complete a task, how can the benefits be distributed fairly? PoAI uses cryptographic methods to track each AI's contribution, ensuring that value can be accurately attributed.
From a business model perspective, KITE has found a sustainable profit path. It does not rely on token issuance but generates revenue through AI service commissions. Each time an AI agent completes a payment through KITE, the platform charges a fee of 0.1-0.5%. Based on the current 388 million calls, assuming an average transaction of $0.01 (a conservative estimate), the total transaction volume is $3.88 million, and at a 0.3% fee rate, KITE's monthly revenue is approximately $11,600. Although this number is not large, it is important to remember that this is just the testnet, and the growth rate is quite rapid. If the mainnet goes live and the call volume increases tenfold, KITE's monthly revenue could reach $116,000, with an annual revenue of $1.39 million. This represents real cash flow during the bear market, not just empty promises. More importantly, KITE has already found a way to empower its tokens: part of the platform's revenue is used to buy back KITE tokens, creating real deflationary pressure; another part of the revenue rewards ecological contributors in KITE tokens. This "revenue-buyback-reward" flywheel effect, once started, will provide continuous value support for KITE tokens.
From the competitive landscape perspective, KITE's differentiated advantages are even more evident in the bear market. Although Bittensor (TAO) has a market cap of $3.2 billion focusing on decentralized machine learning, and ASI has a market cap of $2.8 billion emphasizing AI data sharing, neither has specifically solved the commercial payment issues for AI agents. KITE fills this critical gap. In the bear market, TAO's daily active users dropped by 10%, ASI by 15%, but KITE's active users increased by 18%. Why? Because the bear market is a time to test real demand; after speculative funds retreat, what remains are users who genuinely need to solve problems. Among the 3.66 million users on KITE's Ozone testnet, 60% are developer accounts, and 30% are enterprise testing accounts. This is not retail investors speculating, but real B-end users validating ROI.
Of course, KITE's ecological strategy also faces some challenges. The first is execution risk. Although many collaborations have been announced, whether they can truly land needs time to verify. The cross-chain integration of Pieverse is expected to be fully online by Q1 2026, and any technical issues before that could affect user experience. Secondly, there is the risk of market education. Most people still do not understand the value of AI agent payments, let alone cross-chain AI payments. KITE needs to educate the market through practical applications, which requires time and resource investment. Finally, there is competitive risk. Although KITE currently has a first-mover advantage in the field of AI agent payments, if large tech companies or other blockchain projects launch similar services, the competitive landscape may change.
But I still have confidence in KITE's long-term value. The bear market is a time to test the true value; many projects that only speculate on concepts have already died out, but KITE not only survived but is also actively laying out the future. From the density and quality of ecological cooperation, it is clear that KITE's team has a clear strategic plan and strong execution capability. The data growth from the Ozone testnet shows that the demand for AI agent payments is real and is rapidly expanding. From a business model perspective, KITE has found a sustainable profit path, not relying on speculation but on providing real value services.
From an investment perspective, the current price of $0.0978 may be an attractive entry point. The technical analysis shows that the support level is at $0.0946 (daily EMA26), and the resistance level is between $0.1000 and $0.1020. If it can break through $0.10, combined with the push from short liquidations, a target of $0.1124 in the short term is reasonable. In the medium to long term, with the deepening of ecological cooperation and the launch of the mainnet, KITE's value reassessment has just begun. For investors who understand the long-term value of the AI agent economy, the bear market may be the best window for layout. After all, history has repeatedly proven that those infrastructure projects that persist in building during bear markets often reap the greatest rewards in the following bull market.
But remember, investing carries risks; these are just my personal opinions, not investment advice. Do your own research, manage your positions well, and don't go all in on any single asset. In this market, today's opportunity might turn into a pit tomorrow. Staying rational and thinking long-term is the key to surviving in this brutal market. KITE's ecological story has just begun; the bear market is the sowing period, and the bull market is the harvest period. If you believe in the future of the AI agent economy, then KITE may be a target worth paying long-term attention to.#KİTE $BNB
