December is especially lively in Southeast Asia. The KITE AI team just transitioned from the developer party in Chiang Mai to a community meeting in Seoul. This cross-country Global Tour appears to be a routine project roadshow, but if you observe closely, you'll find that there is a larger strategic layout behind it.
First, let's talk about the event in Chiang Mai. On December 16th, KITE collaborated with OpenBuild, 4seasDeSoc, and ETHChiangMai to hold a developer party. At first glance, it seems like a gathering of tech geeks to code and discuss technology. However, this timing is quite interesting. Just two weeks prior, on December 10th, KITE completed an important EVM L1 technical upgrade. This upgrade pushed the transaction speed to the million TPS level and reduced the block time to under 1 second. The entire upgrade was specifically optimized for the native AI trading scenarios of stablecoins.
If you understand the industry, you know what this means. The biggest pain points for traditional blockchains in payments are speed and cost. The Ethereum mainnet currently processes about 15 TPS, and gas fees can easily reach dozens of dollars. It is simply unrealistic for AI Agents to perform micropayments. However, KITE has addressed this issue at the underlying architecture level, without opting for pseudo-optimizations that sacrifice decentralization for speed. They use a three-layer identity system combined with specially designed payment channels.
This three-layer identity system is quite interesting. The top layer is the user-level EOA root account, the middle layer is the Agent identity derived from BIP-32, and the bottom layer is a temporary session key. This design allows a single user to manage multiple AI Agents simultaneously, with each Agent having its own independent identity and permissions, yet all unified under one account system. It's like having a dozen apps on your phone, each capable of doing its own tasks, but sharing the same wallet.
The core of the event in Chiang Mai was to let developers experience the system hands-on, as KITE knows that relying solely on its own team to write code won't lead to significant growth. They must have ecosystem developers to build applications. Thus, they invited CTO Scott Shi to the site to discuss the technical architecture. The timing was particularly precise, as they had just upgraded the system and immediately held a developer event, effectively pushing the latest technical capabilities to builders.
Three days later, KITE again went to Seoul to hold a community meetup, and this time the stakes were even higher. They invited people from Perplexity AI to do a guest talk. Perplexity is no ordinary project; it is currently one of the hottest unicorns in the AI search field, valued at tens of billions of dollars. Bringing them in to speak indicates that KITE's influence in the AI circle has reached a new level.
CEO Chi Zhang spoke at a keynote in Seoul about the progress after the TGE and the concept of the agentic internet. This topic is quite nuanced because KITE's token will only go live on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase in November. It has only been a little over a month, and ordinarily, the project team should be focused on getting work done rather than telling stories. However, Chi Zhang chose this moment to talk about future plans, focusing not on token price or market cap, but on how to build the entire infrastructure of the Agent internet.
This reveals a very important signal: KITE does not see itself as a coin speculation project. What they aim to build is the payment infrastructure for the AI Agent era, similar to the positions of Visa and Mastercard in the traditional financial world, only that the service objects have shifted from humans to AI.
Looking back at the timeline of these two events, you will notice a pattern. On December 10, there was a technical upgrade; on December 14, they announced hiring for three key positions; on December 16, there was a developer party in Chiang Mai; on December 17, the CTO spoke at COSCon'25 Web3 open-source forum alongside people from Alibaba, Ant Group, and Baidu; and on December 19, there was a meetup in Seoul. The entire rhythm is so tight, it's like a military exercise.
And have you noticed that the circles covered by these activities are particularly wide? Developer communities, AI entrepreneurs, Web3 open-source ecosystems, large tech teams. KITE is not just digging into a specific vertical; it is advancing on multiple dimensions simultaneously. This approach is quite similar to Ethereum's early expansion strategy, where they first built technological influence before driving the explosion of ecosystem applications.
On the technical level, the most significant aspect of KITE's upgrade this time is the introduction of the Proof of Attributed Intelligence, or PoAI consensus mechanism. Traditional PoS or PoW validate computing power or staking, but PoAI verifies the actual contributions of AI Agents. For example, how many effective transactions an Agent has completed for users and how much high-quality service it has provided will all be recorded on-chain as proof of credit.
This design addresses the most critical trust issue in the AI Agent economy. Imagine in the future, there could be thousands of AI Agents running around online, helping people with tasks. How do you know which Agent is trustworthy and which is a scam? The traditional methods might involve looking at ratings and reviews, but these can be manipulated. However, PoAI records every action of an Agent on-chain, forming an immutable credit profile.
Even more impressive is that KITE has designed a Bounded Loss Theorem, which translates to a theorem of bounded loss. Simply put, it sets a loss limit for each Agent through mathematical proof. For instance, if you authorize an Agent to spend a maximum of $100 per day, then theoretically, your maximum loss within 30 days is $3,000. This limit is provable, not based on trust but on mathematics.
This system sounds very academic, but it actually solves very practical problems. Currently, people are hesitant to let AI Agents carry wallets around for fear they might go out of control and spend all the money. However, with a provable loss limit, users can confidently give wallet permissions to Agents, knowing that the risks are controllable.
KITE's technical documentation also mentions a SPACE framework. The five letters represent Stablecoin-native, Programmable constraints, Agent-first auth, Compliance audits, Micropayments viable. In simpler terms, this means stablecoin-native, programmable constraints, Agent-first authentication, compliance audits, and feasible micropayments. These five characteristics combine to provide KITE's complete understanding of the AI payment chain.
Especially regarding the native aspect of stablecoins, KITE has chosen USDC and pyUSD as the main payment mediums. This choice is very smart because the biggest fear of AI Agents when making transactions is price volatility. If you let an Agent pay with ETH or BTC, the price might be one thing when placing the order and change by the time of confirmation. But using stablecoins eliminates this problem. Moreover, KITE is backed by PayPal Ventures, which allows direct access to PayPal's pyUSD. This resource advantage is not something ordinary projects can compare to.
From the funding background, KITE has raised a total of $33 million. In August 2023, they secured $15 million in seed funding, and in September 2025, they raised $18 million in Series A, with lead investors being General Catalyst and PayPal Ventures. General Catalyst has invested in industry-changing companies like Stripe and Airbnb. The projects they focus on are generally not for short-term speculation but for long-term infrastructure. PayPal Ventures needs no further explanation, as the payment giant has directly invested in the AI payment chain, which sends a clear signal.
The team background is also worth mentioning. CEO Chi Zhang previously worked at Databricks, a unicorn company specializing in big data analysis, valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. CTO Scott Shi's technical prowess can be seen from this system upgrade, achieving a million TPS while maintaining EVM compatibility, a challenge comparable to creating a new public chain.
KITE's test network Ozone phase has already produced some data. As of early November, the total on-chain transactions exceeded 500 million, with over 74 million unique addresses, averaging 670,000 transactions per day. This level of activity during the test net phase has already surpassed many mainnet projects, and this is still without the mainnet being officially launched. Once the mainnet Lunar goes live in Q1 2026, the data is expected to be even more explosive.
On the ecosystem level, KITE has already integrated many partners. Shopify merchants can use KITE to allow AI Agents to help process orders. Pieverse is using KITE to create an agent-native payment system. LayerZero provides cross-chain support. Google's A2A and Anthropic's MCP protocols have all been integrated. These integrations are not just superficial; they are genuinely running business.
Recently, KITE has also been promoting a Wind Runner event, encouraging community members to create content, mint SBTs, and complete test net tasks to earn points. This approach may seem routine, but it is actually cultivating early user habits, familiarizing everyone with KITE's product logic. Once the mainnet goes live, this batch of seed users will become the best promoters.
Looking at the roadmap, KITE's plans for 2026 are quite aggressive. In Q1, they plan to launch the AI Agent Subnet Expansion, bringing in projects like Bitte Protocol. In Q2, they intend to integrate decentralized storage, with Filecoin and Walrus on the integration list. Throughout the year, they also aim to complete a full upgrade of the PoAI consensus. If this pace can be maintained, they will essentially break through the ceiling of the AI Agent payment sector.
But to be honest, this path is not easy. There are numerous projects working on payment chains. Solana has its own speed advantage, and ETH Layer 2s are also in a fierce competition for performance. For KITE to stand out in this red ocean, they must have real capabilities. Fortunately, they have captured a key point, which is specifically designed for AI Agents. This differentiation is significant enough because the payment needs of humans and Agents are completely different.
Humans might only make a few payments a day, but an Agent could handle hundreds of micropayments in a second. Humans can afford to wait a few seconds for confirmation, but Agents need millisecond-level responses. Humans are relatively insensitive to gas fees, but Agents making micropayments must incur near-zero costs. These characteristics determine that traditional payment chains cannot adapt to the Agent economy, and KITE is designed from the ground up according to Agent needs.
On December 18, KITE officially announced that the on-chain transaction volume had surpassed 1 billion. This milestone came at a crucial time, right in the middle of their global tour, providing a solid data backing to the entire tour. It's not just about telling stories; it's about using on-chain data to speak. This approach is particularly effective in the crypto circle because everyone knows on-chain data cannot be faked.
Looking deeper, what KITE is doing is actually reconstructing the way value flows in Web3. Previously, blockchain mainly served transactions between people, but in the future, AI Agents will become the main force in economic activities, with potentially 80% of transactions initiated by Agents. However, the existing blockchain infrastructure is not prepared for this trend. KITE has seen this opportunity and is going all-in to create an AI-native payment chain.
From Chiang Mai to Seoul, KITE has conveyed a clear message: technical capabilities are ready, ecosystem collaborations are expanding, and community foundations are being gradually solidified. The next step is to see if they can fulfill these promises after the mainnet launch in 2026. If they can truly enable tens of millions of AI Agents to seamlessly complete payments on-chain, KITE may indeed become the infrastructure for the next era, rather than just another project telling AI stories.
