Summary

This post introduces Mode’s vision to scale DeFi to billions of users globally through AI agents and AI powered financial applications.

• Mode – the story so far

• What is AIFi?

• Making Mode the Home of AIFi

• Mode 12-Month Roadmap

“AI agents will be the largest consumers of blockspace by 2026”

Mode – the story so far

Mode Mainnet has been live for just under 7 months. In that time, we have grown from a new project into a leading L2 with $500 million in TVL. We have over 60 DeFi protocols deployed on mainnet, a successful accelerator program and over 400,000 users onchain.

Mode is currently the third biggest ecosystem in the Superchain, behind Base and OP Mainnet, and our goal to be the centre of Superchain DeFi continues.

The first stage of Mode’s growth has focused on developing a secure foundation to scale yield bearing assets and applications.

Now that this bootstrapping phase has been achieved, we can unveil what we have been working on in the background for the last six months.

Mode is moving to our next phase of growth, supporting AI-enabled infrastructure and interfaces to scale DeFi to billions of users. We call it AIFi.

What is AIFi?

AIFi describes AI agents and machine learning models executing onchain transactions across DeFi protocols. Initially, this will be on behalf of human users but will soon develop into a new financial system powered by agent to agent interactions.

Over the last few months Mode has made strategic partnerships with key Agent infrastructure such as Giza and Olas, in addition to funding RPS AI and Omo with grants to start building for this future.

Onchain agents will create opportunities across:

• Trading tokens

• Generating DeFi yields from protocols

• Managing risk across DeFi protocols

• Voting on governance

AIFi is the next evolution of DeFi that will unlock true mass adoption of a non-custodial financial system.

AIFi abstracts away many of the complexities of DeFi by automating transactions and improving the usability of interacting onchain. With AI-powered onchain applications users will be able to access DeFi with ease.

When we look at why Fintech adoption has exponentially outpaced DeFi adoption we can compare what each financial system has to offer:

AIFi user growth will be driven by both real world consumers and agent to agent (AI2AI) interactions. AIFi enables both man and machine to operate seamlessly within the same financial system for payments and financial services. Complex financial operations are abstracted behind user-friendly interfaces while AI agent’s interact directly with smart contracts.

By 2026, AI agents interactions onchain will dwarf those made by real world users and beyond that, Mode is building towards a financial system for agent to agent (AI2AI) interactions.

AIFi can be broken down into multiple layers and our goal is to build out and support the entire stack.

Building the AIFi Economy

AI is en route to evolve every part of the blockchain stack and Mode is excited to pioneer research and development with leading partners to build the AIFi economy.

AI-Secured L2 Sequencer - Users need to have a safe experience when interacting with smart contracts. Mode works with [redacted] to enable AI enhanced security monitoring across ecosystem applications. This allows for malicious transactions to be stopped before they hit the contracts. The next stage is sequencer level security with [redacted] cloud.

Onchain Agent Infrastructure - For onchain users, interacting with smart contracts is complicated. There should be an easy way to experience the benefits of DeFi without all of the UX challenges. We are working closely with Olas, Giza and RPS AI to enable users and developers to deploy AI agents on their behalf and run strategies across the Superchain. In addition, Mode’s Dapp Intents SDK which is deployed by key ecosystem apps enables agents to access in-depth app event data to train complex models.

AI-Powered Interfaces - Mode is incubating products that will enable simple user experiences and onboarding to crypto. This includes a consumer wallet application giving access to AI-powered vaults and agents via Apple Pay.

New interfaces will be a key onboarding tool for AIFi apps across Mode, Base, OP Mainnet, Worldchain and other Superchain teams. More information will be released on the first app in the coming weeks.

Mode 12-month Roadmap

Mode will continue to scale the DeFi ecosystem with a focus on integrating infrastructure such as Olas and Giza that will act as the foundation for an AI-powered onchain economy.

1. Agent infrastructure

2. New app interfaces

3. User onboarding

4. Scaling adoption

• AIFi Wallet (Web and Telegram app) – Q3 2024

• MODE’s AIFi-enabled Governance Model Launches – Q4 2024

• AIFi Vault Layer – Q1 2025

• iOS and Android Wallet apps – Q2 2025

• Superchain AIFi Assets – Q2 2025

• AIFi Fundraising Platform – Q3 2025

• AI2AI Financial Services – Q4 2025