Monad Foundation Box: The moat for Agent lies in "Influence + Iteration Speed"; the product itself is very easy to copy.

BlockBeats news, on April 21, during the roundtable discussion “Decoding Web 4.0: When AI Agents Take Over On-Chain Permissions,” Box, a Greater China developer relations representative from Monad Foundation, said on the topic of “Agent moat” that the current technical barrier for AI Agents overall is relatively low. Its so-called “moat” does not primarily come from the product itself; rather, it depends more on the founder’s or team’s ability to understand AI, their control capabilities, and their external influence.

He pointed out that, at this stage, many Agent products are essentially put together quickly by relying on open-source code and existing tools, which greatly shortens development cycles. Even the phenomenon of “building a product in just a few hours” is not uncommon. But this also means that product forms are extremely easy to copy. Once cloud vendors or large model vendors get involved, they can often complete replication in a very short time—sometimes even surpassing it—causing early-stage startup projects to quickly lose their competitive advantage.

Box further emphasized that, in this kind of environment, the survival logic of Agent projects is changing. On the one hand, they need to stay ahead by iterating at high frequency. On the other hand, they also need to expand market influence and user awareness as much as possible, establishing a first-mover advantage before the industry has fully matured. He believes that if the product update speed is insufficient and there is a lack of dissemination capability, once big companies pay attention and quickly follow up, the product’s lifecycle may be significantly shortened or they may be directly pushed out.