Agentic finance hackathon recap
The past few years of rapid development in both AI and crypto have opened up a new frontier for consumer and business financial applications.
This past weekend, Vaughan, Eric, Jeffrey and I teamed up to play with new ideas in “agentic finance.”
I’ve always found hackathons to be the perfect occasion to zoom out of the day-to-day trudge and consider what new technologies enable. So our one criteria was that we wanted to work on a project that would’ve been near impossible for us to build until very recently, because the underlying infrastructure was nonexistent or immature.
We identified 3 building blocks that we felt were ready for prime time:
AI agents with reasoning capabilities can now complete multi-step tasks autonomously.
Embedded programmable wallets—AI agents can’t get bank accounts, but they can get crypto wallets.
Stablecoins—The “room-temperature superconductors for financial services” make instant, global, cheap payments a reality.
We combined these to help solve a problem we knew well: Betting with friends is fun, but the logistics (of setting up, collecting $, following up, etc.) are tedious and awkward.
Howie is an AI agent that turns your group chat banter into friendly wagers. Our prototype can formalise the rules for a bet, verify the outcome (via Perplexity, for now), and instantly pay out the winners in USDC. Demo will be out soon.
We’ll be adding chat integrations, fiat <> stablecoin on/off ramps, and advanced verification (e.g. granting permissions for agents to crawl accounts on your behalf). We’ve also gotten fun requests for bet sizing, multi-bet parlays, and using Howie inside a company to bet on hitting sales quotas. (DM me if you want to be an early user!)
We were surprised & honoured to receive the sponsor prizes for the Best Use of Crossmint and Bridge. Without their APIs, we wouldn’t have dared to attempt this build; not to mention their tireless onsite support!
Working on this project was a lot of fun. It also opened our eyes up to the many more opportunities (& gaps) that are still ahead in this emerging field.
Big thanks to Ribbit for organising a great hackathon, Solana for a most scenic venue, and our many friends who gave us inspiration & feedback: Keon, Steven, Ethan, Fynn, Mene, Ken, Zach, and others.
Onwards!
Bonus: Here are 3 early napkin-stage ideas I jotted down at the start of the hackathon. After some deliberation / debate, we ended up going with No. 1 (“Your first idea is usually your best idea.”).
- Friendly private wagers —Predictions markets are gaining a ton of steam this year (Robinhood shows it in their 1st screen), but they rely on the platforms creating markets only when there’s enough demand. What if you just want to bet for fun amongst your friends? A lightweight agent could help suggest the rules, verify outcomes, and automatically settle funds.
- Agent-to-agent commerce—Define the rules of engagement and show how AI agents can ask for quotes, negotiate, and transact with each other with minimal human guidance.
- “Pay-as-you-go” for content—From @pmarca: “The original sin of the Internet was not building payments natively into the browser.” This led to advertising becoming the dominant monetisation model and the misaligned incentives around privacy, data harvesting, etc. we’re all too familiar with today. Paid content is great, but high friction. What if instead of subscribing to someone’s Substack for $X/mo, you had a 1-click way to pay to view just a single post?