2025 Year in Review: AI Powering Web3 Workflow

Hi AP community,

2025 was a pivotal year for Ava Protocol.

We focused on turning AI-powered automation into something people could actually use in practice. Ava Protocol opened up from a developer-first automation stack into a workflow product for mass adoption, serving not just builders, but also everyday crypto traders who want to automate on-chain actions using ready-made templates.

That shift also sets the stage for what comes next. At the beginning of 2026, we’ll begin rolling out a few new products we’re genuinely excited about, including x402-powered payments inside workflows and a GPT experience that brings AP Studio directly into chat.

From AI Concepts to Everyday Workflows

Over the past two years, AI agents have moved quickly from theory to practice. They can plan, reason, and decide. In 2025, we focused on a more practical question: how those capabilities translate into tools that crypto users can rely on day to day.

Much of the early conversation around AI in Web3 centered on what autonomous agents might be able to do in the future. We pushed that conversation forward by grounding automation in real on-chain events and familiar use cases.

For many users, automation should not start with writing logic from scratch. It should start with workflows that work out of the box — trading strategies, recurring actions, and event-driven responses — and can be customized over time.

This perspective directly shaped how we built Ava Protocol Studio.

Ava Protocol Studio: Power Without the Complexity

In 2025, Ava Protocol Studio became the center of gravity for everything we built.

Studio was designed to make AI-powered, on-chain automation accessible to a wider audience, without sacrificing flexibility. Instead of requiring users to assemble code scripts, smart contracts, or off-chain services, Studio lets builders, DeFi users, and teams design workflows visually and ship them in minutes.

We introduced Studio in Introducing Ava Protocol Studio: Event-Driven Automation for Web3, alongside a Quick Start Guide that helped users get started quickly, regardless of technical background.

Later in the year, Templates, AI Automation, and Workflow Upgrades expanded Studio with ready-made templates, allowing users to adopt common automation patterns instantly or customize them further with AI assistance.

For developers, Studio remained composable and flexible. For everyday traders, it reduced the friction between intent and execution.

EigenCloud: The Execution Stack Under the Hood

Making automation simple on the surface required rigor beneath it.

Throughout 2025, we continued investing in execution reliability, transparency, and correctness, ensuring that when a workflow is triggered, users can trust that it executes as expected on-chain.

This work is supported by our underlying execution stack, EigenCloud (@eigencloud), which handles decentralized execution behind the scenes. The infrastructure code is open source on GitHub for builders who want to dive deeper: https://github.com/AvaProtocol/EigenLayer-AVS

We explored these ideas in depth in Powering Verifiable AI Agents in Web3 — from Decisions to Execution, building on earlier work such as AI Agents Explained and Building Web3 AI Agents.

In practice, this foundation allowed Studio to feel dependable rather than experimental, as more users relied on it for real on-chain actions.

Shipping in Public, Improving Every Week

Ava Protocol’s progress in 2025 wasn’t defined by a single launch, but by steady iteration.

On our X account @ava_protocol, we shared weekly updates as Studio evolved. Over the year, we introduced:

Ready-made workflow templates for common automation scenarios
AI-assisted workflow configuration
UI and UX improvements driven by real user feedback
Slippage controls for templates like Uniswap stop-loss
Early explorations toward Studio 2.0

Rather than optimizing for demos, we focused on usability, reliability, and production readiness, guided by how people were actually using the product.

Building With the Community

Alongside product development, 2025 also involved consistent, founder-led engagement across the Web3 and AI ecosystem.

Chris Li (@chrisli2046) participated in live AMAs and discussions with ecosystem partners and builders throughout the year. This included sessions with Nader Dabit (@dabit3) from Eigen Labs, as well as working closely with KelpDAO around Ava Protocol’s integration on BNB Chain. That collaboration was reflected in our own announcement, Ava Protocol joining Kernel to bring verifiable automation to BNB Chain, which marked an important step in extending Ava Protocol’s automation layer into new environments.

Beyond online discussions, Chris represented Ava Protocol at several in-person industry gatherings. He attended the Foundation Capital Summit, where he connected with founders and investors and explored potential future integrations, including early conversations around Solana with its founder Anatoly. Chris also spoke as a mentor at Draper University Startups Accelerator, appeared on Alumni Venture’s Silicon Valley AI panel, and presented Ava Protocol’s approach to hundreds of builders at ETHDenver.

Together, these conversations and engagements helped strengthen Ava Protocol’s presence across the AI and Web3 landscape and supported early adoption through direct interaction with builders, investors, and ecosystem partners.

Learning from Our Users

User feedback played a central role in shaping Ava Protocol. Beyond ad-hoc conversations, we conducted extensive user studies to better understand how people actually use automation today, where they get stuck, and what problems matter most in practice.

In What We Learned from Hundreds of Users About Web3 Automation, several themes came up consistently:

Automation needs to respond to on-chain events with minimal delay
AI features must be predictable and under user control
Tools should reduce cognitive and operational overhead

These insights reinforced our belief that mass adoption in Web3 depends not just on powerful primitives, but on practical product design.

Looking Ahead

As we head into 2026, our focus is on turning momentum into long-term leverage. The next chapter for Ava Protocol is more about expansion. We’re expanding where workflows can run and widening the range of users who can benefit from automation.

Our next major piece will be a dedicated 2026 Outlook, where we’ll share a deeper view into what we’re building next and how Ava Protocol continues to evolve as a workflow product for everyday crypto users.

One area we’re particularly excited about is integrating the x402 payment protocol. x402 enables on-chain payments to be embedded directly into automated workflows, allowing actions, services, and execution to be paid for programmatically. For Ava Protocol, this opens the door to workflows that are not only automated, but also economically self-contained, powering new use cases around paid execution, AI-assisted services, and composable automation.

We’re also exploring a simplified interface for Ava Protocol Studio through GPT in the ChatGPT Store, where users can configure and run permissioned, automated on-chain trades using natural language and smart wallets.

Alongside product development, education remains a priority. Starting in 2026, founder Chris will host bi-weekly sessions to walk through real workflow builds, demonstrate how to remix existing templates, and share practical patterns for automation. These sessions are aimed at helping users go from ideas to building workflows with less friction.

Together, these efforts reflect our direction for the coming year: making AI-powered, on-chain automation more accessible and deeply integrated into simple, everyday tools like ChatGPT.

Closing

As we look back on 2025, we’re grateful for everyone who built, tested, shared feedback, and trusted Ava Protocol along the way.

Your input helped shape Ava Protocol into a workflow product that balances depth with accessibility and sets the stage for broader adoption in the years ahead.

Here’s to a productive 2025, and an even more exciting 2026!