Imagine you've just bought a brand new subway card and are ready to embark on a pleasant journey. But the ticket seller tells you that the first step is to memorize a randomly generated PIN— like a piece of densely packed fortune-telling paper, it's incredibly difficult to decipher . Then, he adds, "If you lose this PIN, you'll never be able to ride the subway again, and the funds on your card will be permanently lost." Oh, and one last tip: before each swipe, you'll be faced with a dynamic fee selection. A little carelessness could lead to overpaying or a failed swipe.

Sounds like a joke, right? But this is the reality of using a blockchain wallet. Mnemonics, gas fees, transaction failure rates—these maddeningly complex details are invisibly keeping ordinary people out. Blockchain technology originally promised to be accessible to everyone, but its user experience feels like it was designed for geeks.

The good news is that this situation is changing. A quiet technological revolution is taking place: wallets are learning to understand human language and hiding complexity in the background.

If AI comes into play, this revolution could bring on-chain wallets their own “iPhone moment”—not because the technology is more powerful, but because it’s finally become simple.

1. From ATM Repair to “A Few Clicks”: The Evolution of Wallets

Remember the old ATMs? They were clunky, complicated, and the on-screen instructions were confusing. You had to figure out how to operate the machine before you could withdraw money. But what about today's ATMs? Simply insert your card, enter your PIN, press a few buttons, and out comes your money. Users don't need to understand the underlying mechanics—the gears, wrenches, and circuit boards are hidden inside the machine.

Early wallets were like old-fashioned ATMs. You had to write down your seed phrase, set your gas fee, choose a nonce, and hope your transaction didn't fail. Account Abstraction (AA) technology is changing all that. Its goal is simple: to make the wallet a "few-click" tool.

How does AA technology work?

It hides complex underlying logic behind the scenes, allowing users to interact with the blockchain directly in a familiar way. For example, you can unlock your wallet with your phone's fingerprint instead of having to remember a mnemonic phrase; if your account experiences problems, you can ask family or friends to help you recover; and the wallet can even pay gas fees on your behalf, eliminating the need to pay fees for every transaction.

The data speaks for itself. With wallets that support AA technology, the number of steps a novice takes to complete their first transfer can be reduced from six to two. Transaction failure rates are also significantly reduced.

Simplicity not only makes the experience better, but also makes more people willing to try it.

Of course, convenience also brings risks. The more powerful AA technology becomes, the more likely users are to rely on a single service provider, such as a hosting platform or infrastructure provider. It's like an automatic car: while it's easy to drive, if the transmission breaks, you're stuck with the factory.

2. When the wallet becomes “financial Siri”

The future of blockchain technology might look like this: You log into your on-chain wallet and send a command: "Buy me $500 worth of Bitcoin and stake it on the highest-yielding DeFi protocol." Then, it understands your intent, proactively and automatically unpacks the transaction, optimizes fees, and completes the transaction. You don't need to learn any blockchain knowledge, and you don't have to worry about transaction failures. Wallets are no longer just cold tools, but intelligent, proactive assistants.

This is the potential of future AI-powered wallets. It allows wallets to evolve from “tools” to “partners,” helping you complete complex on-chain operations.

If we summarize the AI-enabled wallet capabilities as an evolutionary process, it can be divided into four steps:

Step 1: Understand what you say (intention analysis): You only need to express "what I want to do" instead of "how I should do it".

Step 2: Automatically break down the steps for you (execution orchestration): It will package multiple steps into a simple instruction to reduce the possibility of errors.

Step 3: Tracking for you in the background (risk prevention and control): It will help you identify suspicious contracts, abnormal authorization requests, and potential phishing attacks.

Part 4: Remember your preferences (personalized configuration): It will customize asset management strategies based on your risk preferences and liquidity needs.

These features may sound like science fiction, but they are already becoming a reality.

Take Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, for example. This month, the company announced a new system designed to bring artificial intelligence agents “on-chain.” The tool will enable large language models (including top models such as Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini) to directly access blockchain wallets and conduct transactions using cryptocurrencies.

At an industry panel in London this month, the founder of one AI product described an early pilot project where users completed their first on-chain trades via natural language prompts. For advanced traders, the AI allows for batch investing in multiple tokens with a single command—something that would be nearly impossible manually. He said the company is also testing automated "schemes" that can trigger trades or portfolio actions based on conditions like price movements or social signals, enabling agents to execute trades on users' behalf.

Of course, AI's intelligence can also cause trouble. If it's hijacked by malicious code, your money could be misdirected. The solution is to set up a "sandbox" for the AI: limiting its permissions and ensuring that every action can be audited and traced.

3. Three Thresholds: Why Web2 Users Haven’t Entered Yet

AI makes wallets smarter, but the migration from Web2 to Web3 still faces three hurdles:

• Fiat deposits and withdrawals: Ordinary users need a low-friction fiat deposit channel. If deposits are as easy as topping up a subway card, user conversion rates will increase significantly.
• User experience and failure rate: Gas fee fluctuations and transaction failures discourage users. The coordinated optimization of AA technology and AI can significantly improve these problems.
• Compliance and trust framework: Wallets and AI need to meet global compliance requirements while ensuring the security and transparency of transactions.

The key to solving these problems lies in collaboration. AA technology hides underlying complexity, AI reduces user learning costs, and fiat currency on-ramp and stablecoin rails solve the last mile of payment.

Only when these technologies work together can on-chain transactions become as simple as Apple Pay.

4. AI Agent Economy: When Your Wallet Takes Action for You

The logic of traditional finance is: humans issue instructions, institutions execute them. In the blockchain world, however, the logic shifts to: humans express their intentions, AI executes them, and the blockchain completes the settlement. This model is known as the "agency economy."

The advantages of the agency economy are clear: it reduces the distance between trust, decision-making, and execution. But it also brings new challenges:

• Moral hazard: Will AI deviate from the interests of users?
• Information asymmetry: Can users audit AI’s decision-making and transaction paths?
• Incentive compatibility: Is it possible for AI to choose a trading path that is more beneficial to itself (such as slippage or MEV)?

Solving these problems requires a synergy between technology and regulation. For example, permission sandboxes can be used to limit the scope of AI operations; auditable logs can be used to ensure transaction transparency; and layered know-your-customer (KYC) and emergency rollback mechanisms can be used to meet regulatory requirements.

5. Who is likely to win: Not the fastest car, but the best-driving car

The competitive barrier for smart wallets lies not in technological advancement but in the smoothness of the user experience. Future winners may possess the following four advantages:

• Distribution and user relationship: Who can become the user's default entry point, such as a social platform or payment tool.
• Capital cost and clearing and settlement efficiency: who can provide the lowest transaction cost and the highest success rate.
• Developer ecosystem: Who can build the most powerful developer community and standardized interfaces?
• Compliance and brand trust: Who can obtain the most licenses and user trust globally?

Regional differences also shape different market landscapes: Why do the US and EU prioritize compliance, while Latin America and Africa prioritize cross-border payments? Why do Southeast Asia and the Middle East favor super apps?

More in-depth analysis of the regional differences in the global crypto market will be released in this column soon.

Conclusion: The best technology is that you can’t feel its existence

Great technology often ends up being "invisible." Lighting makes people forget about electricity, and navigation makes people forget about maps. The same should be true for blockchain wallets. They don't require you to understand every detail of the blockchain; they simply help you complete each transaction.

When technology disappears, users appear; when users appear, growth occurs.

This time, blockchain may truly be able to move from the geeks' toy rooms into the living rooms of ordinary people. All it needs to do is learn to understand one simple human idiom: "Help me get this done."