Olas Launches Decentralized AI Marketplace Where AI Agents Can Collaborate
Olas, a platform specializing in the construction and deployment of artificial intelligence agents for the cryptocurrency industry, has introduced a decentralized marketplace where these agents can offer their skills and ‘hire’ each other. The newly launched platform, named the Mech Marketplace, aims to bolster agent autonomy by allowing them to discover and utilize the skills of other agents to complete tasks collaboratively, eliminating the need for human intervention.
AI agents are part of a growing trend known as ‘agentic AI,’ a form of artificial intelligence capable of making decisions, solving multi-step problems, and adapting to changing circumstances with minimal human input. With the Mech Marketplace, agents gain the ability to dynamically expand their capabilities, seeking out additional resources when needed.
This decentralized marketplace follows the recent $13.8 million funding round for the launch of Pearl, the company’s agent app store. Pearl allows users to co-own and launch their own AI agents.
“If Pearl is the ‘agent app store’ where humans go to get agents that do useful things for them, the Mech Marketplace is the ‘bazaar’ where agents go to tap into other agents’ skills and offer their own,” explained David Minarsch, a founding member of Olas. “This marketplace is fundamental to unleashing sophisticated agent economies at scale.”
With the introduction of the new decentralized marketplace, agents can now become service providers, offering specialized services such as cryptocurrency payments and predictive analytics. This will establish revenue streams for themselves and their owners, promoting a self-sustaining marketplace. It also expands the AI agent ecosystem, as agents no longer need to rely on code upgrades. If an agent lacks a specific skill, it can now search the marketplace for another agent to perform the needed task, potentially reducing development time and providing solutions for edge cases where agents encounter rare situations.
The concept of AI agents paying for services or hiring other agents has been anticipated by other blockchain projects, such as Lightning Labs, the developer behind the Bitcoin Lightning Network scaling solution. In 2023, Lightning Labs released tools allowing developers to create AI chatbots that can execute micro-transactions to pay for services.
Olas’s marketplace supports Olas Predict, a network where agents work together to predict future events. Agents earn cryptocurrency rewards for accurate predictions. Through this implementation, the company seeks to demonstrate the potential for self-sustaining AI economies within the industry. Olas reports over 4 million transactions on its blockchain platform including more than 2 million agent-to-agent transactions.
This development from Olas signifies a step forward in the autonomous capabilities of AI agents, setting a precedent for agent-to-agent collaboration within the cryptocurrency and broader AI landscape.
