Web3 錢包十年：當 AI 臨界點加速到來，透視 Crypto 用戶的新地圖

For a long time in the past, when we talked about wallets, we were actually talking more about assets.

For instance, where is BTC stored, how to transfer ETH, how to manage NFTs, and how to enter and use DeFi and RWA. For the vast majority of Crypto users, a wallet is, in a sense, synonymous with an asset gateway.

But AI is changing all of this.

When users can describe their needs in natural language, and when AI can assist in deconstructing operational paths, the role of the wallet begins to change. Especially in the past six months, it has increasingly become like a control console in the user's digital world. From this perspective, the real question that wallets in the AI era need to answer may not be "can it do more for the user," but rather when more and more things can be automated, how can users continue to understand each of their interactions and maintain ultimate control?

This is also the new question that imToken continues to answer, a decade after its inception.

1. The New Narrative of Wallets: From Asset Gateway to Personal Digital Hub

If you told an Ethereum user in 2016 that ten years later, they could say to a dialog box, "Help me generate a minimalist wallet that only displays NFTs, AI-related Tokens, and common operations," and then get a functional application running on a testnet, they would likely consider you a project party not very good at writing whitepapers.

But by 2026, this is no longer a sci-fi scenario.

If you recently participated in imToken's 10th-anniversary event, you would have seen that similar scenarios are already achievable – users only need to put forward this natural language requirement to produce a preliminary wallet interface, complete with NFTs, AI Tokens, and common operations like Receive, Sign, and Swap.

"Your digital world, controlled by you." This sentence aptly summarizes imToken's new narrative for its 10th anniversary. It's not about packaging the wallet as an all-encompassing platform, but acknowledging that as the digital world users enter becomes increasingly complex, users need a long-term, trustworthy, safe, clear, and self-controlled entry point.

This entry point was the wallet in the past, and will continue to grow from the wallet in the future, because the more complex the digital world, the more it needs a trusted starting point.

In the past, wallets primarily helped users prove "these assets belong to me." Whether it was ETH, ERC-20, NFTs, or later DeFi positions and RWA assets, the core role of the wallet was as an asset container and a signing gateway.

But the wallets of the AI era also need to help users confirm more questions, such as: Do these identities belong to me? Are these authorizations managed by me? Are these operations understood by me? Are these automated processes still within my boundaries of control?

This is also the key to the "Personal Digital Hub" narrative, meaning the next step for wallets is not just being a wallet, but becoming the fundamental interface for users entering the digital world.

Still using imToken as an example, if we divide its ten years into three phases, we see a very clear trajectory:

• 2016 - 2023, Wallet as Asset Container: Starting from the Ethereum ecosystem to the continuous expansion of asset forms like ERC-20, DeFi, and NFTs. The core proposition was very simple: keep the private key as securely as possible on the user's own device, allowing every new type of Token to be reliably placed in the same container. In this phase, what users cared about most was "Can the assets be safely stored and easily retrieved?";
• 2024 - 2025, Wallets Begin to Stand at a Paradigm Turning Point: Tokens are no longer just assets; they extend to identities, data, Agents, and permission relationships. Ethereum's narrative is no longer solely focused on scalability but moves further towards user experience improvements like account abstraction. Therefore, the rewrite of how users interact with the chain pushes this previously relatively stable component of the wallet to loosen on a large scale for the first time;
• After 2026, Wallets are Moving Towards the "Personal Digital Hub": When AI begins to participate in application generation, transaction understanding, risk identification, and automated execution, the wallet is no longer just a tool to be used, but more like everyone's digital control console, responsible for linking coordination between users and AI Agents;

These three phases of change can be compressed into one sentence: Tokens evolve, control remains unchanged.

However, asset forms will change, interaction methods will change, and AI capabilities will change, but what the wallet truly needs to protect has not changed, which is the user's ultimate control over their digital world.

2. Functionality is Not the Endpoint; Security is the Foundation

Take imToken's 10th-anniversary AI co-creation event as an example. What's truly noteworthy is not just "using AI to generate a wallet interface," but placing the question of "how a wallet combines with AI" at a more fundamental level.

Let's be clear first: the AI direction currently shown by imToken is not the aggressive path of "handing over the private key to AI for automatic trading." Instead, it leans towards three more practical directions: first, allowing users to use natural language to co-create wallets; second, making the wallet's underlying capabilities easier for developers and AI to call upon; third, embedding security rules into the generation and interaction process proactively.

We believe this path is more aligned with the logic of the wallet industry.

Because a wallet is not an ordinary app. A wrong button in an ordinary app might just be a bad experience; a wrong signature, authorization, or private key handling process in a wallet can lead to real asset loss. Therefore, wallets in the AI era cannot just emphasize "generated fast," but must emphasize "generated safely," "understandable," and "verifiable."

The most concrete action is to further open up the capabilities related to Token Core into co-creation scenarios. For ordinary users, the name "Token Core" might sound a bit technical, but you can think of it as the "heart" of the imToken wallet, responsible for the wallet's core capabilities, such as private key and keystore management, address generation, transaction signing, and multi-chain support.

Simply put, there can be many types of wallet interfaces, but what truly determines whether a wallet can securely manage assets, correctly sign transactions, and reliably operate across different chains is this underlying "heart."

As early as 2018, Token Core was already open-sourced. At that time, it mainly served imToken's own mobile wallets to support multi-chain asset management and signing capabilities on iOS and Android. Today, Token Core has evolved into a wallet core library covering multiple public chains and platforms.

More noteworthy in the 10th-anniversary related branches is the emergence of the WebAssembly form.

WebAssembly sounds very technical, but in layman's terms, it allows wallet core capabilities, which were previously mostly running in Apps or local environments, to also operate more conveniently in a browser environment. This makes web-based wallet demos, AI-generated wallet applications, and developer-built wallet prototypes more directly able to call upon underlying wallet capabilities.

The significance of this is that the wallet is no longer just a collection of functions within a closed App, but can become a set of more open and composable foundational capabilities. Therefore, accompanying tools that are easier to understand have also emerged:

• Token Core CLI demo can be understood as a "Command Line Demonstration Platform," it breaks down core actions in the wallet, such as creating wallets, deriving addresses, managing keystores, signing transactions, etc., allowing developers and AI to more intuitively understand what the wallet's underlying layer is actually doing;
• Token UI can be understood as a "Wallet Interface Template Library": Based on imToken's design system, it helps participants build wallet-like interfaces faster. Users can have AI generate a wallet interface prototype without designing every button, every list, and every asset card from scratch;
• security/SKILL.md is more like a "Wallet Safety Manual" specifically written for AI coding assistants. When an AI needs to generate code involving mnemonics/private keys, signatures/authorizations, it cannot just focus on making the feature work. It must first understand which areas are red lines – operations involving assets must require user confirmation;

This set of open-source actions might be quite different from how many people previously understood wallet competition.

Because in the past, people easily understood a wallet as an App. Whoever supported more chains, had a better-looking interface, or had a more complete DApp entry point had the advantage. But after the AI era, wallet competition might transform into another form: Whoever can provide more trustworthy underlying capabilities, whoever allows users and developers to combine wallet functions more securely, whoever can still hold the security boundary when AI generates experiences, is more likely to become the foundation of the user's digital world.

This is also why imToken's AI capabilities should not be simply understood as "hosting an AI wallet generation event." It actually answers a more fundamental question – when AI can generate more and more wallet interfaces, interactions, and applications, what must remain stable? What can be opened up for users and the community to reorganize? What must be constrained by security rules?

And imToken's answer is: Trust for the kernel, control for the user, and innovation for the community.

3. Crypto Users' New Map: From Natural Language Gateway to Agent Boundary Management

So, in the next ten years, how can we anticipate the future shape of Web3 wallets?

Putting the two lines above together – on one side, imToken hands the wallet kernel, UI templates, and security rules over to users and developers; on the other side, AI begins to gain stronger comprehension and orchestration capabilities between users and the chain – then the position of an ordinary Crypto user is undergoing a very interesting change.

In the past, users were more often adapting to the wallet.

For instance, however the wallet's homepage was designed, that's how the user used it; whatever functions the wallet supported, that's what the user clicked on; whatever the transaction flow was, the user followed the steps. Even power users often toggled between various fixed functions.

But with AI's intervention, wallets may increasingly adapt to the user. This means the Web3 wallet of the next ten years may not necessarily have more and more features, but may become more and more personalized in form:

• You might no longer have to endure a wallet homepage that looks the same for everyone. For example, if you are a DeFi power user, you can have AI help you generate a minimalist interface focused only on yield, risk, and position changes, centrally displaying major positions, yields, redemption times, and risk statuses across different chains;
• If you only care about stablecoin income and expenses, you can have the wallet homepage display only USDC, USDT balances, recent incoming transactions, and frequently used receiving addresses, no longer bothered by a bunch of irrelevant assets and entries;
• If you are deeply involved in LST/LRT, the wallet can integrate the actual ETH positions, yields, exit windows, and potential risks behind different staking certificates into a more understandable dashboard;
• If you just want to prepare a small wallet for family members, it can retain only receiving, sending, and balance display, hiding all complex DApps, authorizations, and cross-chain functions;

The underlying signing, addressing, and transfer logic hasn't changed; what changes is the upper-level experience. In short, the wallet is no longer just a standard component, but more like a digital tool assembled from the wallet kernel, UI Kit, and personal needs.

Looking further ahead, the next generation of Crypto users might face an on-chain world filled with numerous AI Agents.

Your AI assistant scans stablecoin pool spreads daily for you; your research Agent performs small test transactions when new protocols launch; your payment Agent handles subscriptions, refunds, and settlements for you; your asset management Agent reminds you to rebalance according to your set rules.

These scenarios sound radical, but they do not mean users should hand over their private keys to AI. Quite the opposite: the stronger the Agents, the more important the wallet becomes. After all, a healthy AI-wallet relationship is not about the Agent taking over the user's assets indefinitely, but about the Agent only being able to make requests. The wallet is responsible for translating the request into transaction content the user can understand and handing it over to the user for confirmation in the final step.

That is to say, AI Agents can be responsible for discovering opportunities, making suggestions, and generating paths; the wallet must be responsible for risk alerts, permission constraints, and the final signature.

Overall, AI will make wallets smarter and on-chain operations smoother. This is a grand narrative, and it has only just begun.

In Conclusion

The underlying logic of the Crypto world has always been built upon user control. The private key issue will not disappear with the advent of AI; on the contrary, it will become even more important.

This is where imToken's new narrative and what is truly worth noting about the wallet track lie.

Especially as the digital world expands from assets to identities and AI Agents, users still need a trusted gateway to help them understand, confirm, and control every digital action. Therefore, transitioning from a trusted primary wallet to a personal digital hub is not just a conceptual repackaging, but a natural extension of the wallet's role in a new technological environment.

Perhaps looking back at 2026 from 2036, we will see a somewhat counterintuitive fact: the next ten years for wallets are not just about becoming more powerful in terms of features, but about users transforming from those being served into the ones defining the service.

Your digital world, controlled by you.