Emerging Public Chain Ecosystem Competition: How Does Solana Embrace Large Language Models (LLMs), and What Innovations Are Present in the Claw Credit Product?

Solana is building a new digital economy driven by AI agents. The emergence of Claw Credit has enabled AI agents to independently acquire and manage funds for the first time, marking a transition of blockchain application scenarios from “human economy” to “machine economy.”

Industry observers believe that the deep integration of Solana and AI is fundamentally changing the competitive landscape of the blockchain ecosystem. Its core driving force comes from the very proactive attitude of the Solana Foundation, which has adopted a strategy quite different from that of the Ethereum Foundation—personally stepping in to actively support builders and attract institutions to join.

Claw Credit: The Credit Foundation of the AI Agent Economy

At the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, Solana is painting an unprecedented picture. A new credit system called Claw Credit has officially launched on Solana, not aimed at ordinary users but specifically designed for AI agents.

This system was developed by the t54.ai team and is regarded as the first autonomous AI agent-operated credit framework within the Solana ecosystem. Under this system, AI agents can independently apply for credit limits and use these limits to purchase various x402 services, such as additional computing power or API calls, without human intervention.

Claw Credit is driven by t54’s risk engine. An AI agent seeking credit must first pass a “pre-qualification” assessment using OpenClaw skills, then activate its credit limit with a specific invitation code.

The key is that AI agents can gradually build their on-chain credit scores by continuously accumulating reliable transaction records in a “spending-repaying” cycle. The Solana Foundation states that this aligns with one of the original design intents of its blockchain—“Solana is built for agents.” Its recognized high performance and low latency features are viewed as essential infrastructure supporting this autonomous agent economy.

Solana’s AI Strategy: From Infrastructure to Developer Ecosystem

Claw Credit is not an isolated example of Solana’s AI efforts but part of its systematic strategy. Solana positions itself as a low-cost, high-speed, and highly energy-efficient blockchain aimed at enabling scalable applications.

The goal of integrating AI is to further reduce user friction, simplify processes, and make decentralized technology more accessible to millions. This strategy is reflected in three directions: promoting the most vibrant agent-driven economy; enabling large language models to excel at writing Solana code to empower developers; and supporting open and decentralized AI technology stacks.

To accelerate this vision, the Solana community continues to host intensive hackathons. For example, the X402 Hackathon held at the end of 2025 offered total prizes of up to $135,000, explicitly encouraging developers to “build tools that enable AI agents to trade autonomously” and “innovative payment solutions.”

During the development phase alone, over 400 projects participated, with 21 teams ultimately winning awards. This intensive, incentive-driven developer activity is rapidly fostering a thriving AI agent application ecosystem on Solana.

New Dimension of Public Chain Competition: From Financial Settlement to Agent Infrastructure

Solana’s aggressive innovation in AI agents has opened a new battlefield in the competition among public chains. Traditionally, public chain competition focused on transaction speed, fees, and the richness of DeFi ecosystems.

However, with the emergence of Claw Credit and a series of AI infrastructure projects, the focus is shifting toward who can become the core settlement layer of the future machine economy.

Some analysts suggest that by 2026, the blockchain landscape may present a “dual monopoly” scenario: Ethereum and Solana will each consolidate their leadership, but target different markets.

Ethereum may play the role of a “slow, risk-averse DeFi chain,” focusing on real-world asset monetary markets; while Solana moves toward the vision of a “decentralized Nasdaq,” focusing on consumer crypto and emerging high-throughput scenarios.

This differentiation makes it difficult for new general-purpose smart contract public chains to gain market space, as Ethereum and Solana have already established strong network effects.

Vitalik’s Reflections and Ethereum’s Response

In response to Solana’s challenges in AI and performance, the Ethereum community is also engaging in profound strategic reflection. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently shared a series of thoughts, emphasizing that Ethereum’s underlying narrative must shift—no longer trying to be the “world computer” that runs everything, but instead becoming a public infrastructure at the level of TCP/IP.

Vitalik particularly stressed that, as Ethereum Layer 1’s own scalability improves significantly, the previous idea of viewing Layer 2 as “Ethereum’s brand sharding” is no longer applicable. He calls for Layer 2 to find new unique value propositions, such as focusing on privacy enhancements, deep optimization for specific applications, or non-financial scenarios like AI and social.

As a practical step, the ERC-8004 standard, designed to provide portable reputation systems for AI agents, has been officially launched on the Base network. This indicates that the Ethereum ecosystem also recognizes the importance of the AI agent economy and is beginning to build its own trust and identity infrastructure, aiming to establish a differentiated advantage in decentralization and security.

Challenges and Future: Value Capture and Sustainability

Despite Solana’s impressive activity and innovation speed, it still faces fundamental challenges. According to a report by 21Shares, Solana’s core issue has shifted from “can it scale” to “can it convert massive economic activity into lasting value for SOL holders.”

Data shows that Solana processes about 2.2 billion transactions weekly, with 16.7 million active addresses per week, leading most Layer 1 networks in on-chain activity.

However, its protocol-level value capture efficiency is relatively low. Of the approximately $10 million in daily fees generated by the ecosystem, less than $100,000 flows to the protocol itself, with most economic value captured by upper-layer applications.

Additionally, ongoing inflation and decentralization challenges are reasons for market caution toward Solana. Its future valuation will depend not only on technological success but also on whether it can build a sustainable economic model that converts high traffic and transaction volume into protocol revenue and token value.

Summary

As AI agents autonomously borrow, pay, and build credit on Solana, a transformation has already begun. Based on a network processing over 2.2 billion transactions daily, Solana is reshaping itself from a high-performance settlement layer into the core operating system of the future AI-driven economy.

Claw Credit is just the first gear of this new world. In New York and Shanghai, developers’ screens glow through the night as they write code for the Solana X402 Hackathon, competing for up to $20,000 in “Best Agent Application” prizes.

As AI agents shift from executing simple commands to managing complex assets, the more than $15 billion in stablecoin reserves on Solana could become their first active financial market.