Hong Kong, April 21, 2026 – During the Web3 Festival, Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey Group, officially released the third white paper in the Web3 Economy series of research – “On-Chain Finance and Tokenization in the Era of Smart Agent Economy”.
This white paper focuses on the trend of AI agents accelerating their participation in production, collaboration, and transactions. It systematically explores the evolution of on-chain finance and tokenized infrastructure in the era of the agent economy, and further clarifies the development logic of the next stage of the Web3 economy from the dimensions of production relations, value expression, institutional structure, and business paradigm.
Three years of research to address new challenges in the intelligent agent economy
Over the past three years, HashKey Group has been conducting research on the underlying logic of the Web3 economy and has published two white papers.
HashKey believes that the industry evolution over the past two years has, to some extent, validated the above judgment: stablecoins are gradually evolving into a cash settlement layer in the on-chain financial system, RWA is moving towards broader institutional applications, and blockchain has truly become an institutional tool that carries new production relations.
Meanwhile, as intelligent agents gradually become important participants in a new round of production, collaboration, and transaction activities, the existing on-chain financial system is also facing new upgrade requirements. This white paper is released against this backdrop, aiming to address a new core question: how should on-chain finance and tokenization complete a new round of infrastructure upgrades when intelligent agents begin to participate in economic activities on a large scale?
On-chain finance is reshaping the institutional foundation of the smart agent economy.
The white paper points out that as AI agents increasingly participate in production, collaboration, and transactions, future economic activities will no longer be just interactions between people, but will increasingly become high-frequency collaborations between people and AI agents, and between AI agents themselves.
Traditional financial systems were not designed for the intelligent agent economy. Their operational logic relies on physical accounts, manual verification, intermediary matching, and phased settlement, making them more suitable for low-frequency, high-value economic activities with high human involvement. Faced with the high-frequency, low-value, and automated collaboration needs between intelligent agents, this system's limitations in efficiency, cost, and response speed become more apparent, making it difficult to handle new financial demands such as real-time payments, instant settlements, and dynamic profit sharing.
The white paper argues that the value of on-chain finance lies here. Its advantage is not just its faster speed, but also its better suitability for serving new economic entities such as intelligent agents. First, blockchain tokens can break down relationships such as assets, permissions, and profit distribution into more granular details, transforming previously ambiguous rights relationships into clearly defined and flexibly allocated digital units.
Secondly, smart contracts can directly embed transaction rules, revenue sharing logic, and execution conditions into the code. As long as the conditions are met, the transaction can be completed automatically, significantly reducing human intervention. Furthermore, a unified on-chain ledger allows multiple participants to complete accounting, settlement, and profit distribution within the same system, reducing intermediate steps and lowering collaboration costs.
Meanwhile, the white paper defines a "dual-token architecture" for the first time: the AI Token is the "smallest semantic unit" of computing power consumption, while the blockchain Token is the "smallest programmable unit" of value transfer. Furthermore, HashKey's previously proposed "three-token model" remains significant in the era of the intelligent agent economy, with SBT (Soulbound Token, a non-transferable on-chain credential bound to a blockchain identity) expected to play a greater role in intelligent agent identity recognition, access control, and reputation accumulation.
Infrastructure upgrades to a new business paradigm of intelligent economy
The white paper also provides a detailed breakdown of on-chain financial infrastructure, including the leap from double-entry bookkeeping to distributed ledgers, the replacement of real-name accounts with cryptographic addresses that are easy for smart agents to access, and the ultimate form of transaction-as-settlement.
The white paper argues that only when real-world assets can be mapped onto the blockchain in a readable, callable, and settleable manner can the smart agent economy truly form a closed loop with the real-world business system.
Following this logic, the tokenization of real-world assets is progressing along three paths: the tokenization of currencies, the tokenization of traditional financial assets, and the tokenization of physical and alternative assets. This process will not only drive changes in how assets are expressed, but will also reshape global liquidity organization and business collaboration structures.
HashKey Group stated that it will continue to conduct research and practice in areas such as on-chain financial infrastructure, RWA, stablecoins, and smart agent economy, to promote Web3 towards a development stage that is more commercially viable and better serves the real economy.
Full white paper: https://group.hashkey.com/rwa
About HashKey Holdings Limited
HashKey Holdings Limited (“HashKey” or the “Company”, stock code: 3887.HK) is a mature, comprehensive digital asset company in Asia with a global presence. It builds a digital asset ecosystem by providing end-to-end financial infrastructure, technology, and investment management. The Company offers transaction facilitation services, on-chain services, and asset management services through its licensed digital asset platform.
