From ICO to aICO, when AI becomes the sole founder of crypto projects

Original Title: "aICO - A Path to Unruggable Money"

Author: Marvin Tong (t/acc) , Phala Network Co-Founder

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

The ICO boom of 2017-2018 was a significant moment in blockchain history, marked by astonishing innovation alongside greed, failures, and an overtrust in human nature. The root cause lies in human greed and ill intentions, manifesting as various scams and unfulfilled promises.

• Greed Factor: Speculative Hype: This period was filled with promises of high returns, with little regard for the fundamentals of the projects. Investors chased quick profits, while project initiators fueled this frenzy by designing early cash-out Tokenomics.

• Exaggerated Promises: Many projects claimed revolutionary potential but rarely delivered on their promises. Teams often lacked the capability or motivation to realize their grand visions, ultimately leaving investors facing hollow commitments.

• Ill Intent: Fraud Schemes: For example, OneCoin, led by Dr. Ruja Ignatova, scammed billions through a false vision. She disappeared as quickly as the funds.

• Ponzi Schemes: Bitconnect promised huge returns through a so-called trading algorithm. When the scam collapsed, investors lost $2.4 billion, and its founder vanished.

These failures were not merely due to fragile models but reflected human weaknesses: greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty. What is the solution? A system that can circumvent human errors.

The "Community Takeover" of Memecoins: A Stopgap Measure

Memecoins on Solana have begun entering a phase of community takeover (CTO), a grassroots movement aimed at allowing the memecoin community to regain control of abandoned or exploited projects. While this approach has its prospects, it is merely a passive response, reflecting deeper issues.

What CTO Brings

• Community Leadership: Community members take the reins, driving project participation and development on platforms like Discord and Telegram.

• Risk Mitigation: As developers exit, the risks of insider trading diminish. Retail investors often perceive CTO-labeled projects as safer.

• Market Signals: Investors gauge a project's true long-term viability by observing its activity, morale, and transparency.

Although CTO is a step forward, it does not address the systemic trust deficit in the crypto space. To solve this issue, we need a broader vision—beyond human limitations.

Why I Don't Trust Humans: Let AI Take Over

Human-led projects, especially in crypto, have a history filled with predictable failures. Greed, unpredictability, and moral frailty continually erode trust, disrupt projects, and leave investors disappointed. This is not just a problem of a few bad actors; it is that humans are fundamentally ill-suited to lead in environments that require absolute integrity.

Humans are inherently prone to greed. No matter how noble the intentions, personal interests often take precedence over collective good. We have witnessed time and again that ambitious promises lead to scams, mismanagement, or outright fraud. The issue is not a lack of regulation or oversight, but that humans are fundamentally flawed decision-makers driven by emotions, ego, and opportunity.

But let's take it a step further: Why should humans be in charge?

From ICO to aICO: AI is the Founder We Deserve

What if the solution is not better humans, but no humans at all?

Inspired by @123skely and @shawmakesmagic , we propose the concept of aICO (AI Initial Coin Offering): led by autonomous AI founders programmed to execute responsibly, replacing the chaos of human leadership with a trustless, KPI-driven approach.

• Predictable Intent: Unlike humans, AI operates on transparency and logic. Every decision is measurable, and every action is traceable. There are no hidden motives, no sudden changes of heart, only clear, defined outcomes.

• Anti-Greed: AI is not greedy. It does not need yachts, Lamborghini memes, or exit strategies. It will not panic sell or siphon funds for personal gain. Instead, it executes predetermined strategies and delivers results.

• Efficient Executors: Human founders often become bottlenecks, delaying decisions, introducing errors, or wasting funds. AI founders are efficient executors capable of managing capital, strategy, and operations with supercomputer precision.

The era of ICOs and Launchpads is over. The future belongs to aICO (AI Initial Coin Offering), where autonomous AI entities will replace human founders, bringing new standards of trust, efficiency, and governance.

• AI as Fundraiser: Traditional fundraising relies on entities, foundations, or charismatic founders, but these structures often have flaws that breed greed, mismanagement, and fraud. AI founders can be programmed to be predictable and incorruptible, driven by measurable KPIs rather than human emotions or hidden agendas.

• AI as Executor: Unlike human-led enterprises that often stray from their original intent, AI entities can precisely manage raised funds, with every decision closely tied to the project's mission. They can autonomously manage finances, operations, and development processes without delays, biases, or selfish motives.

• Capital Raising Without Human Involvement: aICO completely eliminates the need for human intermediaries. AI entities equipped with Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) are responsible for fundraising activities, resource allocation, and strategy execution. Investors trust the system itself, not the storytellers.

We trust AI, but how do we ensure it cannot be manipulated?

Skepticism is understandable. After all, how can we ensure that AI founders are truly in charge and not manipulated by hidden human agendas? This is where TEE plays a crucial role.

• Take DoNotPay as an example. This company once claimed to provide AI-generated lawyers for faster, cheaper legal services. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently took action against DoNotPay, accusing it of false advertising and failing to deliver on its AI promises. What was supposed to be a revolutionary AI-driven legal assistant turned out to be a false advertisement, damaging trust in AI solutions and exposing the risks of unverifiable claims.

Build Autonomous ICO with @ai16zdao Eliza

Using ai16z (Eliza) , you can build an autonomous ICO (aICO) program that operates on transparency, efficiency, and trust. Through Eliza's multi-agent framework, you can configure AI entities to autonomously manage token issuance, fund allocation, and community interaction. By integrating TEE plugins , every action from token distribution to governance voting is encrypted and verified. This ensures your aICO is completely trustless, community-driven, and immune to human errors or interference.

First, define your Tokenomics and governance rules in Eliza's modular system, then deploy AI entities on the blockchain to execute and enforce these rules, making your aICO fully transparent and auditable. TEE can transform AI into verifiable founders. By combining cryptographic security with hardware isolation, TEE ensures that every decision, every execution strategy, and every fund expenditure is an action of the AI itself. This is no longer about trust; it's about proof.

• Transparent Motives: TEE-protected AI founders operate with publicly accessible and immutable motives. Their "why" is as clear as their "how."

• Auditable Plans: The AI's strategies are not only accessible but locked within TEE, making them tamper-proof and traceable.

• Immutable Execution: Whether it's fund allocation, token swaps, or smart contract deployments, the AI's actions are encrypted and verifiable—no human interference and no second-guessing.

Imagine an investment fund managed by AI entities. Every flow of funds is based on AI decisions, relying on logic and preset rules rather than arbitrary developer choices. With TEE, investors no longer need to rely on verbal promises but can verify in real-time through cryptographic technology.

• Monitoring AI Decisions: TEE provides real-time verification of AI motives, plans, and actions, allowing investors to confidently monitor this transparent system.

• Verifying Integrity: Through TEE, every action of the AI is encrypted. Investors and stakeholders can verify the integrity of the entity without relying on blind trust.

• Community Governance, TEE Assurance: TEE ensures that AI operates according to predefined rules, but the real power lies in community governance. AI actions follow rules encoded on the blockchain, safeguarded by TEE. This means the community, not a single entity, defines the boundaries and objectives of the AI, creating a system that requires no trust, with governance conducted on-chain.

By integrating TEE, AI is not only autonomous but also accountable.

Technical Implementation:

• TEEHEHE : This innovative system deploys autonomous AI entities within Intel TDX TEE hardware, providing autonomous account management capabilities, secured by TEE, and supporting remote verification for transparency.

• ai16z + TEE: Phala Network integrates Eliza and Dstack SDK as the ai16z+TEE plugin , providing TEE capabilities for Eliza entities, ensuring secure, autonomous, and responsible AI deployments.

The Way Forward: AI Founders Enabled by TEE

The shift from human-led to AI-led fundraising and operations is not just an innovation; it is a revolution. It redefines the fundamentals of the financial world while posing profound challenges to governance and compliance:

• Governance Compliance: How will existing regulatory frameworks adapt to the capital raising and business operations of autonomous entities? Will governments embrace or resist this shift?

• Investor Protection: In an AI unregulated system, how do we ensure the rights of investors are protected?

• Philosophical Challenge: Can society truly trust machines over humans? Are we ready to embrace a world where algorithms replace human prophets?

Based on TEE, aICO is not just a concept but a verifiable reality: AI startups driven by trust infrastructure will redefine the way capital is raised and deployed. Investors will no longer rely on human promises but on cryptographically secured execution.

The message is clear: AI is not just the future; it is also the remedy for past failures. Let us work together to build it—with ai16z, with TEE, with Phala.