By integrating AI agents with blockchain infrastructure, Neo Ecofund’s John Wang envisions a decentralized world where autonomous “silicon-native” entities act as sovereign economic participants.
Beyond AI and blockchain integration
The evolution of the blockchain industry has long been defined by the “smart economy,” a world of programmable assets and automated contracts. But according to John Wang, head of growth for the Neo ecosystem and managing director of Neo Ecofund, the industry is on the verge of a more profound transition to what he calls the “sentient economy.”
During a recent discussion about the launch of Spoonos, Neo’s new framework for artificial intelligence (AI) agents, Wang elaborated on a future where humans may no longer be the primary participants in the global economy.
While the industry often treats AI and blockchain as separate silos, Wang believes their integration is the foundation of a new economic class. A sentient economy is defined as an economic system where AI agents, rather than just human operators, own assets, make autonomous decisions, and can interact trustlessly on-chain.
Wang emphasizes that this move is not just about combining two popular technologies. Instead, we focus on enabling AI agents to actually participate in the digital economy by ensuring they are verifiable, accountable, and configurable. Under this framework, AI agents are sovereign economic actors. By existing on-chain, these agents can prove their identity, perform financial transactions without human intermediaries, and remain accountable through transparent and immutable code.
To make this vision a reality, Neo introduced Spoonos. Positioned as a successor to the “smart economy” philosophy that Neo has advocated since 2017, Spoonos provides the technological scaffolding for building and coordinating these autonomous agents.
The framework currently supports a developer runtime and an integrated data layer, enabling the creation of agents that can reason using AI models while operating over blockchain infrastructure. Wang noted that the concept has already gained institutional and developmental traction. Through strategic collaborations with industry leaders such as ChainGPT and Morph, Neo is actively fostering a broader ecosystem where these agents can interact across different platforms and protocols.
Addressing the hurdles of programmable intelligence
Despite this momentum, Wang remains candid about the significant obstacles that stand in the way of a fully realized sentient economy. He noted that developer tools are still in their infancy, meaning the kit needed to bridge high-level AI inference and low-level blockchain execution is still being refined. Furthermore, the industry is working to determine how agents can autonomously generate and retain value, and the mechanisms for agent value capture are still in their infancy. Finally, the learning curve remains steep, requiring developers to master the complex intersection of AI, blockchain, and decentralized coordination.
For Wang and the Neo ecosystem, this transition represents a natural progression in the utility of decentralized technology. If the past decade was focused on making assets “smart” and programmable, the next decade will be dedicated to making the economy itself “sentient.” As Wang summarized, the team used to build for programmable assets, and now it’s building for “programmable intelligence.”
As AI agents begin managing portfolios, optimizing supply chains, and negotiating contracts on-chain, the sentient economy could soon move from a visionary concept to standard operating procedure in the digital world.
Wang’s vision for the sentient economy extends far beyond decentralized finance and instead focuses on AI’s ability to interpret the physical and digital worlds. During the Scoop AI Global Hackathon, which drew more than 500 developers in Silicon Valley and London, Wang found that the most compelling innovations are those that prioritize “probabilistic intelligence” over simple automation.
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One standout application used Spoonos to recursively derive mathematical curves from raw data, revealing hidden causal relationships between unrelated phenomena. For Wang, this represents the framework’s true potential: creating agents that act as a bridge between raw information and human understanding.
“For me, that’s the essence of the sensory economy: building agents that not only automate transactions, but also perceive, reason, and reveal the structure of the world,” Wang said.
He believes this change will occur through quiet consolidation rather than sudden technological upheaval. As these tools become more sophisticated, they will begin to fundamentally change the way society processes information and makes decisions.
“By the time people realize it’s happening, the sentient economy will already be here,” Wang predicted. “It doesn’t arrive with a big bang. It’s quietly built into the way we observe, decide, and act.”
changes in civilization
Neo Ecofund’s managing director believes that the global Web3 ecosystem is currently undergoing a “civilizing” transformation. He argues that the industry has moved beyond the era of pure digital assets focused on tokens and consensus and into a new phase defined by programmable cognition.
The most exciting change for Wang is that blockchain is no longer just a tool for financial transactions. It has become the “coordination foundation” for autonomous silicon-native agents. By providing AI with cryptographic keys to infer, transact, and persist on-chain, the industry is moving from building simple tools to “building minds,” he suggests.
He describes this transition as the dawn of an “unreliable civilization of sentient actors,” a transition so profound that it transcends the importance of specific technological token standards. In his view, this evolution from “programmable value” to “programmable intelligence” marks the beginning of a “new sociophysics” where humans, AI, and hybrid intelligence interact in an integrated networked economy.
“As carbon-based intelligence gives way to silicon-native agents, we are no longer just building tools, we are building minds,” Wang said. “The moment we gave AI the keys to sign, transact, reason, and persist on-chain, we pried open something much bigger than the financial system.”
Frequently asked questions 💡
- What is the sentient economy? It is a blockchain-based system in which AI agents act as sovereign economic participants.
- Why did Neo launch Spoonos? Spoonos provides a framework for building and coordinating autonomous AI agents on-chain.
- How is this different from a smart economy? While the smart economy focused on programmable assets, the sentient economy enables programmable intelligence.
- Where will the initial adoption take place? Neo’s collaborations across Silicon Valley, London, and global Web3 hubs are driving early traction.
