AgentFi to XenoFi: A New Paradigm of Stablecoin Yield

Against the backdrop of increasingly diverse stablecoin yield strategies and limited user attention and execution efficiency, AgentFi, as the next paradigm of "AI + DeFi" integration, provides DeFi users with an intelligent agent solution that requires no monitoring and automatically optimizes.

1. Classification and Comparison of DeFAI and AgentFi

Although DeFAI and AgentFi are both in the "AI + DeFi" intersection, their technical essence, product forms, and paradigm missions are completely different. AgentFi differs from traditional DeFi or generalized DeFAI projects in that its core feature is: the AI Agent is the main executor and decision carrier, making fully automated decisions and closed-loop execution, rather than simply using AI as a decision support tool for data analysis and strategy enhancement.

DeFAI Category: Tools that use AI to assist or enhance DeFi-related functionalities, such as strategy optimization, data analysis, investment advice, etc., with AI models assisting human decision-making. Such financial automation products rely on explicit user instructions and strategies, executing the "from instruction to operation" process.

AgentFi Category: Build a financial system where on-chain AI agents are the primary executors. Agents can autonomously reason, make decisions, and complete transactions or governance operations. Users authorize agents to act on their behalf, and the agents make decisions and execute proactively. Using the "from intent to outcome" paradigm, users only need to express their goals, and the system can formulate and execute strategies.

Currently, the market is flooded with a large number of Agent launch platforms or trading markets. Compared to AI Meme tokens that are purely speculative and have no actual utility, there are very few AgentFi projects that truly focus on the Crypto Native Defi world. Through extensive online research and screening, we have categorized and rated the AgentFi projects currently in the market, eliminating those that are too early or clearly nonsensical.

stablecoin yield optimization

• ARMA：⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Infinity：⭐⭐⭐

strategy portfolio/liquidity mining type

• Perp88：⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Kotani：⭐⭐⭐
• Autonolas：⭐⭐⭐

On-chain transaction execution type

• Fastlane：⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Drift Protocol：⭐⭐⭐
• Keyper：⭐⭐⭐
• AgentX：⭐⭐

The above 9 AgentFi projects are all at the initial stage of having on-chain execution closed loops, clear scenarios, and basic products. However, to be honest, the AgentFi track is still too early; the user experience of most products is hard to describe, and there is still a significant gap compared to mature DeFi protocols.

2. Stablecoin Yield Optimization in AgentFi

The track of stablecoin yield optimization is not new in the DeFi world. From the earliest Yearn Finance automated yield aggregator and Idle Finance's automated asset rebalancing and strategy combination platform, to Gauntlet, a professional DeFi risk modeling and protocol-level yield optimization platform aimed at institutions, all belong to relatively representative automated yield optimization projects before AgentFi.

AgentFi has initially realized the vision of mutual assistance between Crypto and AI: that is, AI empowers users to better participate in the native DeFi world of Crypto through on-chain information collection and decision-making capabilities, while utilizing the immutability of blockchain to retain transaction details in the form of on-chain logs, ensuring that logic is verifiable and actions are traceable. As a continuation of the stablecoin yield article, we will focus on discussing the only product in the AgentFi track that has received a five-star review and is the sole item in the 'stablecoin yield optimization' category — ARMA.

3. Vision and Paradigm Concept of the Giza Project

Giza is a blockchain infrastructure project focused on building "Verifiable AI Agents" and is committed to promoting the emerging paradigm of Agent-native Finance. Unlike Modulus Labs or EZKL, which are more inclined towards theoretical research or infrastructure development, Giza emphasizes engineering and practicality. It is one of the earliest projects in the ZKML track to achieve a complete closed loop of "on-chain intelligent agents + verifiable execution + AI scheduling."

Giza has proposed a groundbreaking concept - Xenocognitive Finance, which introduces agents as a new interface in decentralized finance to address the cognitive bottlenecks of human participants and reconstruct market intelligence and structure. Agents are not passive tools, but "cognitive representatives" with independent reasoning capabilities and on-chain execution authority. They enhance the overall market's information processing capacity through a distributed agent network, allowing market intelligence to expand with the scale of participation rather than collapse, and providing trustworthy results through zero-knowledge proofs. In short, Xenocognitive Finance is a new paradigm for efficiently participating in decentralized finance that extends human cognitive abilities through autonomous intelligent agents, achieving "cognitive offloading" without sacrificing sovereignty in a non-custodial model, eliminating the need for constant market monitoring and automatic protocol switching.

The architecture of the Giza Protocol includes the following three layers:

• Semantic Abstraction Layer: Bridging the semantic gap between AI and blockchain, helping AI understand the blockchain world.
• Decentralized Execution Layer: Provides a scalable, secure, and censorship-resistant agent execution environment.
• Agent Authorization Layer: Ensures that the agent operates in a non-custodial, secure, and controllable manner.

The agent execution process of Giza is completed by the collaboration of three core modules, divided into four key steps:

1. Request Processing (Semantic Abstraction Layer): The AI agent initiates an operation request via the MCP protocol, and the system parses the natural language policy into standardized on-chain operation instructions while validating the format, semantics, and permission boundaries to ensure the request is legal and executable.

2. Protocol Interaction (Decentralized Execution Layer): Execution nodes call DeFi protocols to complete actual operations based on instructions. The system dynamically optimizes the transaction path, considering gas costs, slippage tolerance, and protocol liquidity. After task execution, results and task proofs are generated for subsequent verification.

3. Execution Verification (Authorization Layer + Execution Layer): The system checks whether the operation complies with the Session Key authorization scope set by the user, multiple Attester nodes independently verify the operation, and the aggregator node collects signatures to reach a consensus, ensuring the result is safe and trustworthy.

4. Result Feedback (Semantic Abstraction Layer): The execution results are transformed into structured semantic information and returned to the AI agent system for subsequent strategy adjustments and automated cyclical decision-making.

In July 2023, Giza announced the completion of a $3 million Pre-Seed funding round, led by CoinFund, with participation from StarkWare, TA Ventures, and Arrington Capital. Angel investors included Rand Hindi and Julien Bouteloup. In May 2025, Giza completed a $2.2 million seed funding round, led by Base Ecosystem Fund, with follow-on investments from CoinFund, Arrington Capital, Re7 Capital, and Contango Digital Assets. These two rounds of funding demonstrate the capital market's continued optimism towards Giza's vision in the "AI + DeFi" field.

4. Representative Product ARMA: Stablecoin Yield Optimization Agent

ARMA is a stablecoin yield optimization smart agent launched by Giza, aimed at maximizing automated yield across protocols for users. It is currently deployed on the Base network and plans to expand to more Layer 2 ecosystems, supporting mainstream lending protocols such as AAVE, Morpho, Compound, and Moonwell.

4.1 Overview of ARMA Working Mechanism

• Smart Strategy Scheduling: Real-time analysis of stablecoin yields, trading costs, and rebalancing timing across various protocols, automatically executing optimal rebalancing operations.
• APR Optimization System: Through a comprehensive optimization of interest rate comparison, cost assessment, and rebalancing logic, it ensures that each operation brings net gains; the actual annualized return can reach up to 2 times that of traditional static holding.
• Automatic compound interest mechanism: Automatically receive and reinvest incentive tokens, converting rewards into the original stablecoin; the compounding frequency is dynamically optimized based on position size and trading costs to enhance efficiency.
• Smart coin exchange logic: Supports dual currency operations with USDC and USDT, automatically and efficiently exchanging coins through integrated DEX when necessary, ensuring that users can always withdraw assets in the original currency, enhancing flexibility and experience.

Overview of 4.2 ARMA Component Module and Security Architecture

The Giza Agent architecture consists of six main modules: smart accounts, session keys, agent core, protocol integration module, risk management module, and accounting module. These modules work together to build a secure, efficient, intelligent, and verifiable on-chain automated execution system.

ARMA ensures the safety of users' funds and operations through a three-layer protection mechanism:

• Smart Account Security: Based on self-custody smart accounts, users always maintain control over their assets, and Giza cannot access the private keys; contracts are audited and support flexible permission management.
• Access control mechanism: Fine-tune proxy permissions through Session Key, limited to specific protocols, operation types, and validity periods, to avoid the risk of full authorization.
• Risk Management System: Only connecting to prudently selected protocols, focusing on stable income scenarios; the entire trading process is traceable, ensuring operational transparency and auditability, enhancing the overall security of the system.

4.3 ARMA Fee Mechanism and Revenue Management

The fee and revenue mechanism of ARMA is centered on user-friendliness and transparency and efficiency, covering three main aspects:

• Fee structure: Charged based on earnings, transparent and verifiable, only a 10% success fee is charged on the actual earnings generated. This fee is settled in a lump sum when the user withdraws, and all fee calculation processes can be viewed in real-time through the dashboard.
• Reward Management: Automatic collection, unified distribution. The ARMA agent will automatically collect and aggregate all rewards from various integrated DeFi protocols, and all rewards will be returned to the user together with the principal and earnings when the user withdraws, without the need for manual operation by the user.
• Asset Management: ARMA does not charge any deposit or withdrawal fees. Regardless of how many protocols are involved in the middle or what tokens are involved, users will always withdraw funds in the original tokens deposited, ensuring the convenience of fund recovery.

4.4 ARMA's integration with DeFi protocols and data performance

Through ARMA's official data dashboard, we can intuitively observe the continuous growth of its asset management scale and the number of smart agents within a few months of its launch. At the same time, the dashboard also displays the dynamic flow of assets among mainstream lending protocols such as Morpho, Aave, and Fluid. We believe that as ARMA connects to more DeFi protocols, the number of active agents increases, and the scale of funds continues to expand, it will further strengthen its positive growth flywheel effect.

V. Core Positioning and Incentive Mechanism of Token

The Giza official has just announced the complete details of the token economic model, and the TGE token issuance has become an important milestone worth paying attention to. $GIZA is the native asset of the Giza smart agent network, featuring immediate usability, long-term value capture capability, and is designed with core principles of community-first, product-driven, and mechanism restraint.

Key points summary:

• Reasonable initial valuation: The initial FDV at TGE is $70M, which is significantly lower than similar AI projects, indicating substantial upside potential.
• Zero unlock initiation: The team and investors have no token unlock at TGE, avoiding early selling pressure and ensuring high consistency with the community.
• The product has been launched: ARMA smart agent has managed over $30M in on-chain assets, and market demand is supported by real use cases.
• Clear token usage: $GIZA is used for staking validation, permission control,