@undefined is quietly positioning itself in a space most crypto projects only talk about at a surface level. While many teams still design products for humans pressing buttons and approving transactions, Kite is building for a future where software agents act on their own. The idea is simple but disruptive: in the next phase of the internet economy, AI agents will browse markets, negotiate prices, manage subscriptions, and move money without asking a human for every step. That future breaks most existing payment systems, and Kite is trying to rebuild those rails from the ground up.
This vision is not just marketing language coming from a whitepaper. The project’s leadership has been explicit that agentic commerce is the real target, not speculative token trading. In practical terms, this means giving AI agents verifiable identities, programmable wallets, and permission structures that allow them to operate safely within defined boundaries. Humans still exist in the loop, but more as policy setters and supervisors rather than transaction approvers. That framing matters, because it explains why Kite is an L1 blockchain rather than just another application or SDK layered on top of existing chains.
External validation has followed this narrative. The extension of Kite’s Series A with participation from Coinbase Ventures adds credibility that goes beyond retail hype. Coinbase typically backs infrastructure it believes can underpin future on-chain activity at scale, not short-term narratives. Combined with earlier backing from PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, this signals that Kite is being viewed as financial plumbing for AI-native commerce rather than a trend-driven experiment. Venture firms do not invest at this level simply for token price appreciation; they invest because they expect real transaction volume and long-term usage.
On the market side, the listing of KITE on HTX expanded access through spot, margin, and perpetual futures trading. This matters less for speculation and more for liquidity discovery. Infrastructure tokens often suffer if they cannot be efficiently priced or hedged by sophisticated participants. Broader exchange exposure allows funds and traders to engage with KITE as a risk asset tied to ecosystem growth rather than a thinly traded niche token. That said, liquidity alone does not guarantee success. If usage does not materialize, listings become noise. Kite’s progress suggests the team understands that distinction.
Where Kite becomes more interesting is in its technical execution. The partnership with Brevis directly addresses one of the hardest problems in autonomous payments: trust without constant verification. Zero-knowledge computation allows agents to prove that they followed rules or executed logic correctly without exposing sensitive data. For AI agents handling payments, subscriptions, or negotiations, this is not optional. Without cryptographic guarantees, autonomous systems become unacceptable to enterprises and regulators. This collaboration shows Kite is not avoiding complexity but leaning into it.
Cross-chain functionality further reinforces this direction. Through integration with Pieverse, Kite-enabled agents can move value across multiple blockchains using gasless stablecoin transactions. That detail is critical. AI agents operating at high frequency cannot be slowed down by manual gas management or unpredictable fees. Gasless micropayments are not a convenience feature; they are a requirement if agents are to operate at machine speed. The deployment of the x402b protocol is another signal that Kite is optimizing for volume and automation rather than one-off human interactions.
Under the hood, ongoing upgrades to Kite’s EVM-compatible Layer 1 focus on throughput stability and identity separation. The three-layer identity model that distinguishes users, agents, and sessions may sound abstract, but it solves a real problem. Humans need long-term identities, agents need operational identities, and sessions need revocable, temporary permissions. Blurring these layers leads to security failures and governance nightmares. By separating them, Kite enables more granular control over what an agent can do, how long it can do it, and under what conditions it can be stopped.
From a token perspective, this context matters. KITE is not being positioned as a meme, a governance-only badge, or a simple fee token. Its utility is being phased in alongside actual network usage, which is slower but more sustainable. Staking, governance, and fee mechanics only make sense once agents are actively transacting and competing for block space. Rolling these features out too early would create artificial incentives disconnected from real demand. The current trajectory suggests the team is prioritizing infrastructure readiness before financialization, which is the opposite of how most failed projects behaved.
Comparisons to other AI-focused networks are inevitable. Projects like Bittensor focus on coordinating AI model intelligence, while Kite is focused on coordinating AI economic activity. These are adjacent but fundamentally different problems. Intelligence without payment rails cannot scale commercially, and payment rails without intelligence become generic fintech. Kite’s bet is that autonomous commerce will be the bottleneck, not model quality alone.
Taken together, these developments show a project moving from theory to execution. Venture backing, cryptographic partnerships, cross-chain payments, and agent-optimized infrastructure are converging around a clear use case. The risk remains high, because agentic commerce itself is still emerging. However, unlike many AI-crypto hybrids, Kite is not vague about who its users are or what they need. If AI agents truly become economic actors over the next few years, the chains that survive will be the ones designed for machines first and humans second. Kite is clearly trying to be one of them.
