What is Kite AI? With $33 million in funding and backing from PayPal, it fully empowers the x402 protocol as an AI settlement layer.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, the vision of an “Agentic Internet” composed of autonomous AI agents is gradually becoming a reality. However, to realize this vision, a core challenge must be addressed: how to provide a trusted, verifiable, and efficient transaction and coordination layer for these autonomous, decentralized AI agents.

Kite AI was born in this context. It is an EVM-compatible first layer (L1) blockchain specifically designed for the AI economy. Through its innovative Proof of Attributed Intelligence (PoAI) consensus mechanism, Kite AI aims to build an infrastructure that not only provides identity and payment capabilities for AI agents but also fairly quantifies and rewards their real contributions to the network, thus laying a solid foundation for a Decentralization AI economy.

What is Kite AI? It is an AI agent payment and settlement infrastructure built on a proprietary L1 blockchain, designed to provide unified identity, payment, and governance standards for Autonomous Agents. The project's biggest technical highlight is the innovative proposal of the PoAI (Proof of Attributed Intelligence) consensus mechanism, which transforms traditional proof of computational power or stake into a value proof of AI contribution. As a project that has secured $33 million in funding from top institutions such as PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, Kite AI has built a complete “AI Lego block” architecture, and during the testnet phase, it has handled over 1 billion AI agent interactions, establishing a technological leadership position in the AI agent payment track.

01 Project In-Depth Analysis

Technical Architecture Design

The technical architecture of Kite AI is built around four core components: the PoAI consensus layer, the KitePass identity system, micropayment channels, and the Agent App Store. The PoAI consensus mechanism achieves transparent value attribution and reward distribution by dynamically assessing the real contributions within AI assets, including data quality, model performance, and agent utility. Unlike traditional proof of work or proof of stake, PoAI focuses on measuring the marginal value of intelligent contributions and prevents free-riding behavior through game-theoretic mechanisms. KitePass, as an executable on-chain passport, clarifies the creator of the agent, the scope of authorization, budget constraints, and operational limitations, providing a standardized identity verification framework for the machine economy. Micropayment channels handle high-frequency small transactions through state channel technology, achieving millisecond-level confirmations and low-cost settlements, only returning to the main chain at the final settlement.

Solution Features

Kite AI primarily addresses three core issues faced by the development of the AI agent economy: payment fragmentation, lack of trust, and unclear value attribution. Traditional internet payment systems rely on a “human-in-the-loop” verification mechanism, which cannot meet the high-frequency collaboration needs of machine-to-machine interactions. Kite AI provides standardized economic interaction protocols for AI agents by decentralizing identity verification, payment clearing, and governance arbitration to the underlying blockchain. Its uniqueness lies in the deep integration of payments with smart contracts, enabling each transaction to automatically execute preset business rules, including rate limits, quota breaks, automatic refunds, and dispute escalation. This design allows AI agents to autonomously complete economic activities within clearly authorized boundaries while ensuring full traceability and auditability.

Application Scenario Expansion

Kite AI's core application scenarios cover multiple cutting-edge fields such as autonomous shopping, investment management, and collaborative research. In the e-commerce scenario, personal shopping agents can autonomously compare prices, place orders, and make payments within a preset budget, completing the entire shopping loop without human intervention. Investment management agents combine real-time market data, sentiment analysis, and risk models to achieve 24/7 automated asset allocation and trade execution. Research agents can coordinate multiple data sources and analysis tools to generate comprehensive research reports and automatically allocate rewards based on the contribution of each component. As the Agent App Store ecosystem expands, Kite AI is gradually penetrating into broader business scenarios such as subscription services, travel planning, and SaaS applications, providing a unified value exchange layer for the AI agent economy.

02 Team and Financing

Investment Background Analysis

Kite AI has completed a total financing of 33 million USD, with the latest Series A round of 18 million USD led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from top institutions including 8VC, Samsung Next, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Hashed, and others. Notably, the project also received strategic investment from Coin base Ventures, continuing its existing financing. This investment lineup reflects the triple recognition of traditional payment giants, venture capital, and crypto-native funds, especially the participation of PayPal Ventures brings deep resources and compliance experience from the payment ecosystem to the project. The financing scale is relatively high among AI+Decentralization infrastructure projects, providing sufficient funding support for the project's mainnet launch and ecological expansion.

Institutional Synergy

The background combination of investors provides Kite AI with a unique strategic advantage. The involvement of PayPal Ventures brings experience and merchant resources from a global payment network, General Catalyst provides ongoing support necessary for long-term engineering and business development, and Coin base Ventures ensures deep integration with the crypto ecosystem. Moreover, the participation of industrial capital such as Samsung Next and SBI US Gateway Fund offers pathways for the project's expansion in mobile devices and traditional finance. This diversified shareholder structure not only strengthens the project's interface advantages in the payment ecosystem but also provides comprehensive resource support for subsequent technological iterations and business collaborations.

03 Token Economy

Total Supply and Distribution Mechanism

Regarding the total supply and specific allocation ratio of the KITE token, existing public information has not yet been clearly disclosed. As an infrastructure project based on the PoAI consensus mechanism, a reasonable token distribution should fully consider multiple dimensions such as ecological incentives, protocol security, team development, and community building. Typically, AI agent payment projects allocate a significant proportion to contributor rewards to incentivize high-quality data, models, and agent services. The team and investor portions need to be designed with reasonable lock-up periods and release rhythms to ensure that interests align with the long-term development of the network. The transparency of the token economic model is crucial for establishing community trust, and the project team needs to disclose detailed information as soon as possible through official channels.

Initial Circulation and Release Plan

The project is scheduled to conduct the Token Generation Event (TGE) on November 1, 2025, but the specific initial circulation ratio and release plan have not yet been clarified. A reasonable token release curve should balance early liquidity and long-term value stability, especially for a mature network that has already processed 1 billion interactions, which requires careful management of early investors' unlocking pressure. The release of the ecological incentive portion should be linked to network usage and contribution value, forming a positive value creation cycle. The contribution assessment system in the PoAI mechanism may directly affect the pace of token issuance, requiring a well-designed inflation control model to ensure the sustainability of token supply.

Core Functions and Value Accumulation

Network Trading Fees

One of the core functions of the KITE token is to pay for transaction and execution fees on the network. Each time an AI agent calls data, models, or tool services, it needs to consume KITE tokens as network transaction fees. A portion of these fees may be burned or distributed to network validators, forming a deflationary mechanism and value accumulation for the token. As the number of AI agents grows and the frequency of interactions increases, transaction fees will become an important support for the value of the token. If the network can maintain a scale of millions of agent interactions per day, with an average consumption of 0.01-0.1 USD equivalent tokens per interaction, the annual consumption may reach tens of millions of USD, providing substantial support for the token price.

Governance Staking and Network Security

The KITE token is expected to be used for network governance and protocol security. Holders can participate in network parameter adjustments, ecological fund management, and protocol upgrade voting by staking their tokens. The PoAI consensus mechanism may require validators to stake KITE tokens to participate in contribution assessment and reward distribution, a design that ensures network security while creating a lock-up scenario for the tokens. A reasonable annualized staking yield set in the range of 6%-12% can effectively incentivize long-term holding while controlling inflation impact. As the scale of network management funds expands, the value of governance decisions will significantly increase, especially in key decisions involving contribution assessment criteria and reward distribution rules.

Ecological Access and Privilege Rights

The KITE token may serve as an access credential and privilege key within the platform ecosystem. Developers may need to hold a certain amount of KITE tokens to access the Agent App Store or to use premium API services. Compared to direct payments using stablecoins, using KITE tokens may enjoy a service fee discount of 15%-30%, this economic advantage promotes the circulation of the token within the ecosystem. As the platform integrates more enterprise-level services, annual collaborations may require holding a certain number of KITE tokens as a condition for collaboration, creating stable institutional demand. If the platform can successfully attract hundreds of enterprise-level customers, there may be considerable token locking demand generated each year.

04 Market Performance

Testnet Data Performance

The Kite AI testnet has performed excellently during the technical validation phase, attracting 230,000 wallet connections in less than 70 hours and processing over 2.5 million AI inference calls in total. Even more impressively, the network has handled over 1 billion AI agent interactions overall, serving more than 10 million users, while maintaining a throughput of 450+ inferences per second and sub-second latency. These data points demonstrate the scalability and stability of the technical architecture, particularly in handling capabilities in high-concurrency micropayment scenarios. The user activity and transaction scale of the testnet provide a solid data foundation for value discovery post-token listing.

Current Status of Ecological Development

Kite AI has established a preliminary ecological foundation through the Agent App Store, and has completed official integrations with Shopify and PayPal. Any PayPal or Shopify merchant can be discovered and used by AI shopping agents through standardized interfaces. The platform has integrated 36 services, covering commonly used capabilities like Uber, Masa, and Irys, forming a complete value chain from data provision to transaction execution. The collaboration with Brevis introduces verifiable computing and privacy-friendly audit capabilities, further enhancing enterprises' compliance confidence when adopting AI agent payments. The Codatta project, incubated within the ecosystem, has received joint funding from Kite AI and the Avalanche Foundation, showcasing the project's commitment and capability in nurturing ecological partners.

05 Competitive Advantage

Technical Performance Indicators

Kite AI's core advantages on a technical level lie in its PoAI consensus mechanism and full-stack payment architecture. Compared to traditional blockchain networks, PoAI achieves a fairer value distribution through proof of value contribution, directly addressing the core pain points in the AI economy. In terms of performance, the test network achieves a processing capacity of 450+ inferences per second and sub-second latency, meeting enterprise-level applications' real-time requirements. The mature application of micropayment channel technology makes high-frequency small transactions possible, with a single channel potentially supporting thousands of off-chain transactions, only returning to the main chain at settlement, significantly reducing transaction costs and network load. These technical indicators have a clear competitive advantage in the current AI agent payment track.

Ecological Cooperation Progress

Kite AI has established deep payment and e-commerce ecosystem collaborations, particularly with the official integrations of PayPal and Shopify, providing real business scenarios and user traffic for the project. As a project strategically invested by Coin base Ventures, Kite AI occupies a core position in the x402 protocol ecosystem and is expected to become the standard settlement layer for AI agent payments. Collaborations with technical partners like Brevis and Codatta further enrich the platform's capability stack, providing developers with a more complete toolchain. These ecosystem collaborations have established a strong barrier for the project, especially in the accumulation of payment gateways and merchant resources, which requires long-term investment to build.

06 Risks and Challenges

Technical Implementation Risks

The main technical challenges faced by Kite AI include the fairness of the PoAI consensus, system scalability, and cross-chain interoperability. The accuracy of contribution value assessment directly affects the core value of the PoAI consensus; if the evaluation algorithm has biases or is easily manipulated, it will undermine the credibility of the entire economic model. System scalability needs to cope with the exponential increase in transactions brought about by the growth of AI agents, especially under the pressure testing of real traffic after the mainnet goes live. Cross-chain interoperability is crucial for connecting AI agents across different blockchain ecosystems, and any compatibility issues could restrict the development space of the network. The project needs to ensure the stable operation of the system in a production environment through sufficient mainnet testing and security audits.

Regulatory Uncertainty

The autonomous payment and decision-making of AI agents may face a complex environment of data privacy and financial regulation. Different jurisdictions have varying accountability mechanisms for AI decision-making, regulatory requirements for cross-border data flows, and automatic payment systems. This uncertainty may impact the global promotion of projects. Especially in scenarios involving financial transactions and the handling of sensitive data, multiple regulatory areas, such as securities laws, payment services laws, and data protection laws, may be involved. Projects need to establish a comprehensive compliance framework and maintain active communication with regulatory authorities to ensure the legality of business operations. As the scale of business expands, the cost of regulatory compliance may increase significantly.

Market Competition Pressure

The AI agent payment sector is attracting an increasing number of competitors, including general Layer 2 solutions, vertical AI application chains, and traditional payment gateway expansions. Kite AI needs to compete directly with these projects in terms of performance, cost, and ecological richness. Especially in the early stages, when network effects have not fully formed, any technical flaws or service disruptions may lead to user loss. Projects need to quickly iterate product features, expand the customer base, and establish sufficient ecological barriers. At the same time, the user habits and switching costs of traditional payment systems are also significant obstacles to market promotion, requiring substantial value increments to attract users to migrate.

Future Outlook

What is the long-term value of Kite AI? This project represents an important attempt to build the infrastructure for an autonomous AI economy, providing standard identity, payment, and governance protocols for the machine economy through a dedicated L1 blockchain. As AI agents transition from demonstration tools to production systems, the demand for reliable payment and clearing infrastructure will experience exponential growth. If Kite AI can successfully launch its mainnet and expand its ecosystem, it has the potential to become a key value exchange layer in the AI agent economy. For investors, the project's technical execution capability, business development progress, and the maturity of its token economic model are core factors that require continuous attention. Amid the overarching trend of the integration of AI and blockchain, Kite AI has the potential to become key infrastructure, but its development path still needs to overcome multiple challenges in technology, regulation, and market dynamics. The progress of ecosystem development following the token generation event and the listing status on mainstream exchanges will be important short-term observation points.