The Good Tech Companies - How Ampersend Is Building the Command Center for the $30 Trillion Agentic Economy
Episode Date: October 31, 2025This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/how-ampersend-is-building-the-command-center-for-the-$30-trillion-agentic-economy. Edge &...; Node founder Rodrigo Coelho reveals how ampersend solves agent-to-agent coordination challenges and why the agentic economy needs new infrastructure. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3. You can also check exclusive content about #web3, #blockchain, #cryptocurrency, #good-company, #ampersend, #ampersend-news, #the-graph, #ai, and more. This story was written by: @ishanpandey. Learn more about this writer by checking @ishanpandey's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Edge & Node founder Rodrigo Coelho reveals how ampersend solves agent-to-agent coordination challenges and why the agentic economy needs new infrastructure standards.
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                                        How AmperSend is building the command center for the $30 trillion agentic economy by Ashan Pondi?
                                         
                                        Ashan Pondi. Hi, Rodrigo. Welcome to our Behind the Startup series. Can you tell us about your
                                         
                                        background, your journey and the challenges you faced from building the graph to now leading
                                         
                                        edge and node, one of the largest infrastructure providers for enterprise blockchain, Rodrigo Coelho.
                                         
                                        Thanks, Ashon.
                                         
                                        My background is in engineering and systems design, and I've always been interested in how information
                                         
                                        and value move across networks. At edge and node, I helped build the graph, which became the backbone
                                         
    
                                        for accessing blockchain data. We went from an open-source idea to powering trillions of queries
                                         
                                        across thousands of applications. The hardest part was keeping it decentralized and reliable
                                         
                                        while the ecosystem was moving at full speed. That experience shaped how I think about standards,
                                         
                                        developer experience and scale. It's also what led us to build ampersend, which is designed to bring
                                         
                                        the same level of visibility and coordination to the agentic economy. Ashan Pondi. Edge and Node built
                                         
                                        the graph, which became critical infrastructure for querying blockchain data. How did that experience
                                         
                                        help your understanding of what's missing in the current AI agent ecosystem? Rodrigo Coelho.
                                         
                                        With the graph, we learned that once an ecosystem starts to grow fast, standards become the difference
                                         
    
                                        between chaos and scale. Developers don't just need tools, they need shared frameworks that help
                                         
                                        everything work together. The same shift is happening now with AI agents. New standards and shared
                                         
                                        frameworks are beginning to emerge and we're helping shape them. But even as these standards form,
                                         
                                        teams still have no clear visibility across their agent networks. There's no unified way to monitor
                                         
                                        interactions or budgets and no operational layer tying it all together. Amper send fills that gap. It's the command
                                         
                                        center for the agentic economy, where teams can finally observe, control, and automate what
                                         
                                        their agents are doing across protocols and environments, managing identity, reputation, and
                                         
                                        coordination in one place. Ashan Pondi, you've identified agent-to-agent interaction management
                                         
    
                                        as a fundamental bottleneck. Walk us through the technical problem. What breaks when
                                         
                                        autonomous agents try to transact and collaborate without a standardized management layer?
                                         
                                        Rodrigo Coelho. When agents start interacting at scale, it gets
                                         
                                        complicated fast. Each one might have its own wallet and its own set of rules. Without a common
                                         
                                        management layer, you lose visibility into what's happening. You can't easily tell which agent
                                         
                                        triggered what action or where value is flowing. Amper send brings order to that chaos. It gives
                                         
                                        developers and enterprises a single place to track and manage all agent activity, budgets,
                                         
                                        and interactions in real time. It's not about handling payments directly, it's about
                                         
    
                                        making those interactions observable, auditable, and easy to control. When agents interact with
                                         
                                        potentially untrusted counterparts, the risks multiply. Managing those risks requires visibility into the
                                         
                                        reputation and cryptoeconomic security of every participant. Ampercend provides that visibility by
                                         
                                        building on ERC-8004, giving teams a trusted way to coordinate, evaluate, and secure their agent
                                         
                                        networks. Ashan Pondi. From a technical standpoint, what makes agent to agent payments and communication
                                         
                                        fundamentally different from traditional API calls or smart contract interactions? Why can't
                                         
                                        existing infrastructure handle this? Rodrigo Coelho. Traditional APIs were built for predictable,
                                         
                                        one-way requests between systems that humans control. Agents are different. They make their own
                                         
    
                                        decisions, can talk to each other, and can trigger hundreds of actions across networks without a
                                         
                                        person in the loop. Once you add money, resources, or shared data into that mix, things get
                                         
                                        complicated. You need coordination, observability, and trust between agents. Existing infrastructure
                                         
                                        was never designed for that. It can't track relationships or manage multi-agent workflows at the
                                         
                                        network level. That's where ampersend comes in. We built it to bridge communication and value layers,
                                         
                                        so teams can see and manage everything happening across their agents through one clear interface.
                                         
                                        Ashon Pondy Ampercend extends both Coinbase's X-402 payment protocol and Google's A2A communication standard.
                                         
                                        Why take a standards-based approach rather than building proprietary technology?
                                         
    
                                        What are the trade-offs?
                                         
                                        Rodrigo Coelho.
                                         
                                        We've always believed that open standards create stronger ecosystems.
                                         
                                        Coinbases X-402 and Google's A2A are emerging as the rails for how agents communicate and
                                         
                                        exchange value.
                                         
                                        Instead of reinventing the wheel, we're helping make those.
                                         
                                        standards usable and scalable. Ampercent connects the dots. We don't replace those standards,
                                         
                                        we make them visible, manageable, and ready for enterprise use. The trade-off is that you have to work
                                         
    
                                        in collaboration with others, which can take longer in the early stages. But the benefit is massive,
                                         
                                        and helps create network effects that make everyone win if the standards get adopted. It means
                                         
                                        developers can plug into a broader ecosystem that speaks the same language,
                                         
                                        rather than being locked into one company's closed system. Ashon Pondi, the autonomous agent space
                                         
                                        is getting crowded, from AI coding assistants to trading bots to customer service agents.
                                         
                                        What do you think about which use cases will drive real economic value versus which are just
                                         
                                        hype? Rodrigo Coelho. There's a lot of experimentation right now, which is healthy,
                                         
                                        but not all of it creates value. The use cases that matter most are the ones that save people time
                                         
    
                                        or move money in measurable ways. I think we'll see the biggest impact in areas like research,
                                         
                                        finance, and operations, where agents can automate repetitive work and coordinate tasks between
                                         
                                        systems. The hype tends to focus on agents that talk, while the real value will come from
                                         
                                        agents that act. Ashon Pondi, what advice would you give to founders building in the intersection of
                                         
                                        AI, blockchain, and infrastructure, especially when the market your building for is still
                                         
                                        taking shape. Rodrigo Coelho. Build for the future you know is coming, not the market that exists
                                         
                                        today. When we started the graph, people weren't asking for decentralized indexing yet, but the
                                         
                                        need became obvious as the ecosystem grew. The same is true now with agents. Don't chase hype
                                         
    
                                        cycles. Focus on solving real infrastructure problems that developers will eventually hit as things
                                         
                                        scale. If you do that, your product will age well. Ashon Pondi, looking five years ahead, how do you
                                         
                                        envision the agent economy evolving. What needs to be true for billions of agents to reliably interact,
                                         
                                        and what role does infrastructure like what you're building play in that future, Rodrigo Coelho.
                                         
                                        In five years, I think every person and every company will have multiple agents working on their
                                         
                                        behalf. But for that to happen at scale, we need shared standards for communication,
                                         
                                        coordination, and control. According to a 16-Z's state of crypto 2025 report,
                                         
                                        A.I. Agents could drive $30 trillion in purchases by 2030, yet there's still no economic
                                         
    
                                        infrastructure built for them. So what happens when every person and every company has swarms
                                         
                                        of agents operating on their behalf? Today there are 41 million mobile wallets and these numbers
                                         
                                        are going to grow exponentially to be in the neighborhood of a billion agent wallets in that same
                                         
                                        time frame. Google's A2A is helping define how agents talk. Coinbase's X-402 is setting the foundation
                                         
                                        for how value flows. Ampersand sits on top of both, giving developers and enterprises the visibility
                                         
                                        and control they need to actually run these systems safely. Our vision is simple, built for developers,
                                         
                                        trusted by enterprises, powering the agentic economy. Don't forget to like and share the story.
                                         
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