Leo Li - NEXUS Final Round #1: AEON - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Hello, hello, hello everyone. My name is Leo and today I'm super excited to introduce you Aon, the first crypto settlement layer for agenic commerce. We're enabling AI agents to pay mass merchants seamlessly for filling last mile gap. Open I yesterday they released instant checkout allowing user to shop inside charge but still requires human in the loop. Charge cannot buy data or services on its own making true agent autonomy impossible and this is what AI is solving for.

We already see other strong players Google, Visa, Mastercard in the picture. So the trend is very clear. AI agents will need to pay and whoever defines the solution will define the new economy. Again, commerce can be broken down into four layers from application all the way to payment. The first three are well covered but the payment remains unsolved with current via solutions.

Why? Two reasons. Identity mismatch agent cannot do KYC. They can't open bank accounts or hold credit cards. Second, skill mismatch.

agents could generate ultra high frequency low value microp payments that today's vid rails cannot support and this is exactly where AON comes in. We're building the first crypto settlement layer for agenic commerce with three core innovations. While vi relies on KYC for humans, we build an immutable onchain identity for AI agents to track payments and to end. Second, while fiat makes payment microp payments too costy to be practical, we leverage crypto and a known network to process them at internet scale. Third, we've established a global crypto to fiat settlement network covering over 50 million merchants worldwide.

Therefore, AON achieves what fear risk cannot. We're enabling AI agents to pay crypto to millions merchants securely, efficiently, and seamlessly. For example, an AI agent can now book and pay for hotels or flights for you using AI. So, how can we grow AON as quick as possible? First, we've already collaborated with Coinbase X42 and the BMC chain officially supporting up to 500,000 TPS.

Second, we're integrating with ATA and SM MCP to reach over 1 million AI agents. Third, we're going to expand AON to more platforms such as Amazon and Shopify to cover over 200 million merchants globally. So, the end state, AON will power all the AA agent payments at internet scale and we're team from leading AI and crypto companies. So this is a the first crypto center layer for Janet Commerce

judges 7 minutes Q&A with Leo. Take it away please.

Uh what's attraction looking like today uh with AON?

Yeah for sure. So for the AI part we've already collaborated with B&B chain. So we already integrated with over hundreds of agents in BMBB chain ecosystem generating over thousand transactions daily. And it just within couple months we're going to increase by integrating with more web 2 products such as A2A and MCP to on board global AI agents to use our protocol.

How do you think about solving this cold start problem where you need agents to be able to plug into AON and they need mergers to be able to accept it. You sort of mentioned MCP but also people have to add MCP to their their existing agent. What's sort of the process or how do you think about solving both of those sides?

Yeah, for sure. We so we do this with two approaches. First we we already nailed down the official partnership with X42. So all the hack so X42 has been holding hackathons across the globe. All the developers can use AR from from now on.

That's the first approach. Second, we've collaborated with merchant platforms to basically give give credits for users whoever use a agent with AI. So that's how we expand AON usage as much as possible and as quickly as possible.

So who are you charging? Is it the agents? Is it the merchants? Is it the users? A mix of all the above.

So the model the business model is very flexible right now. We could charge users or merchants. But for the agents, they can just use AI for free. So that's that's our current approach to expand adoption with for in the AI agents necessary as much as possible.

How do you think about privacy when it comes to payments in general?

You you ask privacy.

Yeah.

Yeah. So basically we appro we use couple approaches here. First we have a node offchain node network to verify both onchain and offchain information. Onchain means the wallet the transaction from wallet agents wallet to merchants's wallet not to only include onchain information which it can remain an anonymous and second because we have these offchain node networks. So we can both not only verify offchain and onchain information make sure the transaction is correctly processed and we can also to have to have the transaction details remain private from the public.

Is there a specific vertical you think is like a best fit for for AON? To the your point, you know, Stripe and Mastercard and Visa, they're all coming out with their own sort of agent, you know, payment frameworks. Seems like that works for things like travel or general e-commerce. You mentioned microp payments yesterday. I mean, where do you think where's the use case where people are going to say, "Yeah, this is perfect for AON."

Yeah, for sure. So, shopping is one example. Yes, I mean user can already do that in inside charg. But we believe what will unlock the mass adoption of these agentic payments definitely fall into the agent itself and the agent SAS. So for agent itself it needs to acquire data quer resource.

So with with uh agents able to do payments themselves they can easily access tons of service and quickly process the co the tasks. Second agent agent SAS say like right now user can ask for a single agent to complete one simple task. But what if user are asking to do a company task such as market research the agent we need to call different agents like data agents um survey survey design agents and report writing agents. By having those having the payment capability, agents can incomplete entire complete tasks and deliver the results straight to the user. What's your timeline for launch?

You sort of mentioned the BNB and mintbased integration or Coinbase integrations. When's this thing actually going live and and how are you thinking about that?

Yes. So, for Coinbase X42, we're already live. So you can direct go to our website and start using AON API powered by Coinbase for your AI agents. And for BME chain, we're already the official partner as the AI payment solution in BME chain ecosystem. That's why we already start integrating with all these AI agents in their ecosystem.

Let's say uh Stripe were to try to compete with you directly, right? Going kind of the other route. What would you do? What's remote? What how do you how would you tackle that?

Yes. So the special or the most biggest advantage of AI is that we already have these strong settlement network covering over 50 million merchants worldwide with a focus in emerging markets such as Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico. So even Stripe is doing crypto payment. We're a perfect partner to work with them to settle the crypto payments across globe for the the emerging markets. just uh kind of maybe double clicking on what does that mean settlement and how did you guys kind of get that um like yeah tell me more about the settlement around 50 million merchants.

Yes. So how we achieve 50 million merchants is that we as a settlement layer we work with we directly work with these payment providers in each country. For example, in Vindam, we directly work with Viet QR, which is QR scan payment channel. And in Brazil, we directly work with Pix, which is also QR payment provider through by directly working with these payment channels, we can easily cover millions of merchants in just a couple months.

But um what's your biggest risk? What keeps you up at night?

Yes, I think the biggest risk is definitely the adoption of AI agents. That's why we're focused because all we already have the crypto infrastructure ready. We have the merchant network ready. That's why we focus heavily focus on working with X42 B&B chain and this HA MCP to on board as many as agents as possible to serve human users and serve agents itself.