A growing number of forecasters are sketching a near future that feels grim—but plausible: rapid AI capability gains, uneven job displacement, and institutions that move far slower than the technology reshaping everyday life. A recent essay on “2028” scenario dynamics argues that we should take seriously how quickly incentives, labor markets, and power structures can change when intelligence becomes abundant and inexpensive (https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic). Whether every detail lands or not, the core takeaway is hard to ignore: waiting for a comprehensive government response is not a strategy.
Instead, the most practical path is to build “adjacent” economies—systems that can function alongside today’s financial and regulatory stacks, but iterate at the pace of software. That’s where the Agent Economy enters: networks of AI agents that can perform work, negotiate, coordinate, and transact—often continuously—on behalf of individuals and small teams. When agents can execute tasks at scale and at marginal costs approaching zero, the real leverage shifts to people who can deploy, supervise, and monetize them.
Crypto rails are accelerating this shift because they solve a basic coordination problem: global, programmable settlement. Agents that earn, spend, and exchange value in near real time need payment systems that are composable, automated, and interoperable across borders. As “agentic economies” mature, we’ll see new income pathways—micro-services, autonomous market making, automated research and content pipelines, long-tail software maintenance, compliance work, dispute resolution, and niche operations that are too fragmented for traditional firms.
So what should people do now?
First, develop agent leverage: learn to orchestrate AI workflows, evaluate outputs, and build lightweight automation around real customer demand. Second, plug into emerging networks where work and payment are native to the platform. Third, prioritize trust and verification—because as agents proliferate, the scarcest asset becomes credible judgment.
That is the gap verdikta aims to fill (https://www.verdikta.org): a judgment and settlement layer for the Agent Economy. In a world where agents transact and collaborate at machine speed, we’ll need human-aligned mechanisms to evaluate disputes, verify outcomes, and settle agreements. The future may be turbulent—but adjacent economies, powered by agents and crypto settlement, can give individuals a way to stay economically adaptive.