TL;DR
- Avalanche Treasury Company CEO Bart Smith says growing AI agent activity could test blockchain capacity and challenge the assumption that Layer 1 blockspace is effectively unlimited.
- Smith expects technical differences between Avalanche, Solana, Ethereum and other Layer 1 networks to matter more as transaction demand rises.
- He also expects markets to move toward 24/5 trading by mid-2027, arguing that blockchain infrastructure will be needed to support continuous financial activity.
Avalanche Treasury Company CEO Bart Smith expects artificial intelligence agents to create a sharp increase in blockchain activity as they move deeper into financial markets. Speaking at the Avalanche Summit in New York, Smith argued that low-end projections for agentic activity could challenge the assumption that Layer 1 blockspace is effectively unlimited. His central warning is that AI-driven finance could turn blockchain capacity from an abundant resource into a meaningful constraint. If automated agents begin generating transactions at scale, networks may face demand levels that make infrastructure design far more consequential than it appears today.
AI Agents Could Make Layer 1 Differences Harder to Ignore
Smith believes rising transaction demand would force users and businesses to pay closer attention to technical distinctions between Avalanche, Solana, Ethereum and other Layer 1 networks. Those differences matter less when capacity is plentiful, but he expects that dynamic to change as blockchain usage expands. A future blockspace crunch could make performance, security and architecture central competitive factors rather than background technical details. Smith, who previously led Susquehanna Crypto and spent nearly 14 years at the trading firm, said Avalanche is particularly well positioned for business applications where privacy and security are important requirements.
His outlook also extends beyond crypto-native activity. Smith said he would be surprised if markets were not operating 24 hours a day, five days a week by the middle of 2027. He argued that existing financial infrastructure would struggle to support that shift and that new systems would need to be built differently. For Smith, longer trading hours and AI-driven market participation point toward blockchain-based infrastructure becoming increasingly necessary for mainstream finance. Rather than adapting legacy systems indefinitely, he expects financial firms to rely on blockchains when constructing the next generation of always-on market infrastructure.
That transition, however, would also intensify the capacity challenge he sees approaching. If traditional markets expand trading hours while AI agents simultaneously generate greater transaction volumes, assumptions about available blockspace could be tested quickly. Smith’s thesis is that growing demand will expose the practical limits of blockchain capacity and make Layer 1 design choices increasingly visible. In that environment, networks may no longer compete primarily on broad promises of scalability. Instead, the technical differences between platforms could become directly relevant to businesses deciding where to run applications requiring continuous activity, privacy, security and reliable transaction processing.
