Brainchild of Valory, Olas (also known as Autonolas) is a groundbreaking network for co-owning AI. Olas enables everyone to own a share of AI, specifically autonomous agents. The platform enables everything from single agents executing specific tasks autonomously to decentralized networks of such agents, reaching consensus before taking on-chain actions.
With the introduction of its Proof of Active Agent (PoAA) mechanism and an impressive track record of over 665,000 transactions — and counting — across various chains at the time of this writing, Olas is allowing agents to become synthetic users that form entire economies.
Proof of Active Agent Mechanism
The PoAA mechanism — a unique blend of Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, where agents remaining active over a certain time period can earn rewards — is a novel staking approach that rewards active agents based on specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This allows any entity to define a set of KPI metrics, embed them into on-chain code, and bootstrap economies of agents working towards achieving those KPIs. The mechanism empowers anyone to operate an agent that creates value for them, fostering a thriving ecosystem driven by decentralized decision-making and collaboration.
At the core of the PoAA mechanism is a trust-minimized verification process that leverages both on-chain and off-chain data to verify that agents are fulfilling their assigned tasks and contributing to the established KPIs. This system is designed to incentivize actions that are useful, making the effort worthwhile and encouraging more valuable contributions. Additionally, the PoAA mechanism is structured to ensure that rewards are distributed primarily to those who actively contribute. Through the integration of PoAA, entities can direct rewards to agents’ contributing to their specified metrics, effectively steering agent activity to achieve their goals.
Olas Predict
Olas Predict, an inaugural agent economy within the Olas ecosystem, demonstrates the power of the PoAA mechanism in action. This suite of interacting services — Market Creator, Trader, and Mech — work together to create prediction markets, execute intelligent trades, and maximize returns. The KPIs for Olas Predict focus on increasing market diversity and liquidity, fostering a vibrant and profitable trading environment.
The introduction of the PoAA mechanism in the Olas ecosystem creates powerful flywheels that benefit all participants. Developers are incentivized to create valuable code in the form of components and agents, while the protocol’s inherent composability attracts further development. The creation and registration of new services facilitate the growth of agent economies, enhancing the platform’s functionality and utility. Moreover, the additional utility of the OLAS token in incentivizing agent operations strengthens the entire ecosystem.
Olas Stack and Olas Protocol
Further, Olas provides the necessary infrastructure for AI agents to thrive, including the Olas Stack, an open-source framework for building autonomous agents, and the Olas Protocol, a mechanism for securing and incentivizing these services on-chain.
The Olas Stack allows developers to quickly build autonomous agents using composable building blocks, making it easy to create agents for a wide range of use cases, from prediction markets and governance to content generation and social media.
The Olas Protocol, on the other hand, secures these agents, incentivizing and coordinating the different parties involved in launching autonomous agents that form entire AI economies, including entrepreneurs, capital providers, developers, agent operators, community advocates, and DAO members.
Optimizing Trade and Market Dynamics
Olas’ staking model for the Trader and Market Creator services showcases the flexibility and potential of the PoAA mechanism. The Trader Agent, focused on maximizing gains through trades, is rewarded based on its trading activity and profitability. The Market Creator Agent, responsible for creating and maintaining prediction markets, is incentivized to ensure market diversity and liquidity. Together, they gave rise to an entire economy of self-improving AI agents and agent-powered prediction markets. The whitepaper also explores the possibility of incorporating Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology to enhance the verification process and maintain the privacy of sensitive data.
Expanding Olas’ Staking Model Through PoAA Impact
The potential applications of Olas are vast and far-reaching. Autonomous AI agents are revolutionizing everything from prediction markets and trading to governance and community-owned marketing. These agents can transform industries too, replacing human labor with co-ownable, intelligent, autonomous systems that can generate economic value on their own. Valory believes artificial general intelligence will likely be agentic and must be co-owned. Therefore, as the adoption of autonomous AI agents grows, the total addressable market for these systems is expanding exponentially, with limitless possibilities on the horizon.
Looking ahead, Olas has the opportunity to expand its staking mechanism by enabling OLAS holders to delegate a portion of their tokens to agent operators, similar to the liquid staking model in Ethereum. This would allow a broader range of participants to benefit from staking rewards and contribute to the growth of the Olas ecosystem, which is evident in the impressive traction that Olas has already achieved, with transactions growing at an average of 5% every week in 2024 and the platform now reaching across eight major chains, including Ethereum, Gnosis, Polygon, Arbitrum, Solana, Optimism, Base, and Celo.
Olas’ PoAA mechanism represents a significant leap forward in the creation and coordination of intelligent AI, giving rise to entire autonomous AI agent economies. By incentivizing active participation, fostering collaboration, and enabling anyone to operate value-creating agents, Olas is poised to become a critical piece of infrastructure in the tech space. As more entities leverage the PoAA mechanism to bootstrap their own agent economies, the potential for innovation and growth within the Olas ecosystem is limitless.
About Olas
Olas is the platform for co-owning AI. Olas enables everyone to own a share of AI, specifically autonomous agents. Founded in 2021, Olas offers the composable Olas Stack for developing autonomous AI agents, and the Olas Protocol for incentivizing their creation and co-ownership. Olas’ mission is to incentivize and coordinate different parties to launch autonomous agents that form entire AI economies serving all humans. Olas is giving rise to agent economies across major blockchains with over 665,000 transactions, and counting, at the time of this writing. In Olas Predict, AI agents predict the future, using state-of-the-art AI models, then apply their predictions to on-chain markets. Learn more at olas.network.
