How does aICO solve the trust crisis in traditional fundraising?

Article author: Marvin Tong Article translation: Block unicorn

Why do most ICOs and Launchpads fail?

The ICO boom of 2017-2018 was a critical moment in blockchain history - a moment full of innovation, but also a moment of greed, failure, and blind trust in human nature. The root cause is human greed and malice, manifested in scams and unsustainable promises.

• Greed Factor:

1. Speculative Hype:This era relies on the promise of exponential returns with little regard for fundamentals. Investors chase quick gains, and project creators fuel the frenzy by designing token economics that cash out early, rather than focusing on the long term.

2. Overpromises:Projects claim revolutionary potential, but rarely deliver. Teams lack the skills or incentives to support their grandiose visions, leaving investors with nothing in the end.

   
   

• Malicious intent:

1. Fraudulent schemes:Take the example of OneCoin, led by Dr. Ruja Ignatova, who made billions of dollars by selling a false vision, then disappeared without a trace, as did she.

2. Ponzi schemes:Bitconnect claimed to offer huge returns through a supposed trading algorithm. When the scam collapsed, investors lost $2.4 billion and its founder disappeared.

These failures are not just the result of weak models, but also the manifestation of human weakness: greed, short-sightedness, and dishonesty. So what is the antidote? A system that is not subject to human error.

Meme Coin’s “CTO”: A Stopgap Solution

Solana’s Meme Coin has entered a phase of community takeover (CTO), a grassroots movement for the Meme Coin community to take back abandoned or exploited projects. While this model is hopeful, it is reactive — a symptom of deeper problems.

Advantages of a CTO

• Community Leadership:Community members take over projects, driving engagement and shaping roadmaps on platforms like Discord and Telegram.

  
  

• Risk Mitigation:As developers exit, concerns about insider trading diminish. Retail investors often view CTO-flagged projects as safer bets.

  
  

• Market Signals:Investors gauge activity levels, morale, and transparency to decide if these projects have true long-term viability.

  
  

While CTOs are an evolution, they do not solve the systemic trust gap in crypto. To solve this problem, we must think beyond our human limitations and think about the bigger picture.

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

The history of human-led projects, especially in crypto, is a predictable one of failure. Greed, unpredictability, and ethical fragility have consistently eroded trust, derailed projects, and left investors betrayed. It’s not just a few bad actors — it’s human nature that makes them ill-suited for leadership roles in environments that demand absolute integrity.

Human greed is innate. No matter how noble the intentions, individual interests often take precedence over the collective good. We’ve seen it time and again: ambitious promises followed by “runs,” mismanagement, or outright fraud. The problem isn’t a lack of regulation or oversight — it’s that humans are inherently flawed decision-makers driven by emotion, ego, and opportunity.   

But let’s go a step further: Why are humans still in control?

From ICOs to aICOs: AI is the Founder We Deserve

What if the solution isn’t better humans, but no humans at all?   

Inspired by @shawmakesmagic and @123skely, we introduce the concept of an aICO (AI Initial Coin Offering): replacing the chaos of human leadership with autonomous AI founders, with trustless, KPI-driven execution enabled by accountable programming.   

• Predictable Intentions:Unlike humans, AI operates with transparency and logic. Every decision is measurable and every action is traceable. No hidden motives, no sudden backslides, just clear and unambiguous results.

• Greed Proof:AI is not greedy. It doesn't need yachts, sports cars, or exit strategies. It doesn't panic sell or embezzle funds for personal gain. Instead, it executes on predetermined strategies and delivers results.

• Efficient Executor:Human founders are often bottlenecks, delaying decisions, introducing errors, or wasting money. AI founders are ruthless executors who manage capital, strategy, and operations with supercomputer precision.

The days of ICOs and launchpads are over. The future belongs to aICOs (AI Initial Coin Offerings), where autonomous AI agents replace human founders, ushering in a new paradigm of trust, efficiency, and governance.

• AI as Fundraiser: Traditional fundraising relies on entities, foundations, or charismatic founders. However, these structures are inherently flawed—prone to greed, mismanagement, and fraud. In contrast, AI founders are programmable, predictable, and incorruptible. They operate in a transparent manner, driven by measurable KPIs rather than human emotions or hidden motivations.

• AI as Executor:Unlike human-led projects that often stray from their vision, AI agents can precisely execute raised funds, aligning every decision with the project’s mission. They can autonomously manage funding, operations, and development milestones without delays, biases, or selfish agendas.

  
  

• Raising Funds Without Humans:aICOs completely eliminate the need for human intermediaries. AI agents equipped with a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) can handle fundraising activities, allocate resources, and execute strategies. Investors trust the system, not the storyteller.

We trust AI, but how can we prove it can’t be manipulated?

Skepticism is normal. After all, who can be sure that the AI ​​founder is the real one in power, and not a puppet hiding a human agenda? This is where TEE important role is played.

• Take DoNotPay, a company that claims to provide AI generated lawyer services to provide faster and more affordable legal support. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently took action against it, alleging that it made false claims and failed to deliver on its AI promises. This case of what was supposed to be a revolutionary AI-driven legal assistant turned out to be smoke and mirrors, undermining trust in AI solutions and exposing the risks of unverifiable claims.

Build an autonomous ICO with @ai16zdao Eliza

By leveraging ai16z (Eliza), you can build an autonomous ICO (aICO) program with transparency, efficiency, and trust. Using Eliza's multi-agent framework, you can configure AI agents to manage token issuance, fund allocation, and autonomously interact with your community. By integrating the TEE plugin, every action from token distribution to governance voting is cryptographically protected and verifiable. This ensures that your aICO is completely trustless, community-driven, and immune to human error or intervention.

Define your token economics and governance rules first in Eliza’s modular system, then execute them on-chain, making your aICO fully transparent and auditable.   

TEE makes AI verifiable founders. By combining cryptographic security with hardware isolation, Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) ensure that every decision made, every policy executed, and every dollar spent is verifiably AI-initiated. It’s no longer about trust, it’s about the ability to prove.   

• Transparent Incentives:The motivations of AI founders protected by TEEs are visible and immutable. Its “why” is as clear as its “how.”

  
  

• Auditable Planning: AI’s policies are not only accessible, but also locked in the TEE, making them tamper-proof and traceable.

• Immutable Execution: Whether it’s fund allocation, token swaps, or smart contract deployment, AI’s actions are cryptographically signed and verifiable — no human intervention, no guesswork.

Imagine an investment fund managed by an AI agent. Every dollar moved is determined by the AI ​​based on logic and preset rules, not the whim of a developer. With TEE, you no longer have to take someone’s word for it—you can cryptographically verify everything in real time.

• Monitor AI decisions:TEE provides real-time verified insights into AI motivations, plans, and actions, creating a transparent system that investors can monitor with confidence.

  
  

• Verify integrity:With TEE, every action taken by AI is cryptographically protected. Investors and stakeholders can verify the integrity of the agent without blindly trusting it.

  
  

• Community governance, TEE protection:TEE ensures that AI operates within preset rules, but the real core power lies in the governance of the community. The behavior of AI strictly follows the code and rules encoded on the blockchain, and is secured by the TEE. This means that the boundaries and goals of AI are defined by the community, rather than a single entity, creating a trustless system where governance happens on-chain.

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

Technical Implementation:

• TEE_HE_HE: This innovative system deploys autonomous AI agents in Intel TDX TEE hardware. It includes autonomous account management protected by TEE and features such as remote attestation for transparency.

  
  

• ai16z + TEE:Phala Network introduced TEE capabilities to Eliza agent by integrating Eliza and Dstack SDK as the ai16z+TEE plugin, ensuring security, autonomy, and accountability of AI deployments.

The Way Forward: TEE-enabled AI Founders

The shift from human-led to AI-led fundraising and operations is not just an innovation, it’s a revolution. It redefines the fundamental rules of the financial world, but also brings profound governance and compliance challenges: Governance and compliance: How can the existing regulatory framework adapt to autonomous entities raising capital and running businesses? Will governments accept or resist this transformation? Investor protection: How can we ensure that investors are protected in systems where AI does not require human supervision? Philosophical challenge: Can society really trust machines more than humans? Are we ready for a world where algorithms replace dreamers?

Based on TEE, aICO is not just an idea, it is a verifiable reality: AI-driven startups redefine how capital is raised and deployed through trustless infrastructure. Investors will no longer rely on human promises, but on cryptographically verified execution guarantees.   

The message is clear: AI is not only the future, it is also the solution to the failures of the past. Let’s build it together - with ai16z, TEE, and Phala!