AAs are most useful for creating decentralized finance (DeFi) apps where complete certainty about their performance is of utmost importance.
Decentralized applications (dApps) that can be powered by AAs include:
Unlike blockchains, there are no miners or other intermediaries on DAG, therefore there is no room for miner manipulation. One doesn't need to bother about front-running or censorship by miners. Therefore, dApps running on a DAG are safer than dApps on a blockchain.
Autonomous Agents are similar to vending machines. One sends a transaction with some money and data to an AA and expects a response: some other monetary token and some data permanently recorded on the DAG — similar to inserting coins into a vending machine, entering the number of the desired drink on a keypad, and getting the drink in response.
Autonomous Agents are economic agents when dealing with anything of value and they exist on equal terms with human actors: both are endpoints of interactions. Contracts, on the other hand, exist between humans or human-managed organizations, contracts are interactions.
Unlike humans though, AAs are governed by immutable code, not by free will.
Before actually sending any money or command to an AA, one can see the expected response of the AA.
AAs are written in Oscript — a new programming language designed for this purpose. Oscript avoids some unsafe programming patterns common in earlier languages such as Solidity. It is easier to see what an AA is going to do, it is harder to make mistakes that would cost millions. Programming in Oscript is safer. Oscript syntax is easy to learn and will look familiar to those developers who have experience in JavaScript, PHP, Java, and SQL.
See the full developer documentation about Autonomous Agents.
Some existing AAs:
