Blurring the Lines Between Search and Payment Networks in the Agentic Internet

Introduction: The Evolution of Search and Transactions

Who is a typical internet user today? If your first thought is demographics, geography or commercial attitudes, think again. AI agents are rapidly multiplying, and soon, they will outnumber human users online. This is a fundamental shift in how the internet operates from human first to agent first.

Search engines once helped users find information, stores, and products. When it was time to purchase, users had to enter credit card details, processed separately by payment networks. Meanwhile, much of the internet remained free to browse, with creators monetizing through ads, subscriptions, or paywalls (models built around human users).

But the rise of AI agents is reshaping these interactions. Agents don’t just search; they act. They are authenticating, paying, and executing tasks in a single step. Internet-native currencies are a more natural fit for this new reality, enabling seamless machine-to-machine transactions.

Search and payments are no longer separate. To reimagine search is to reimagine how agents use the internet.

TaskNet is pioneering this shift. It is not just a task engine for AI agents; it is also a built-in payment network that enables frictionless transactions. The search engines of the future (task engines) aren’t just about finding things; they’re about getting things done.

The Convergence of Search and Payments

Old vs New Payment/Search Models

The traditional internet has kept search (discovery) and payments (execution) as separate functions. Agentic internet is blurring this boundary. The only effective way is that the new task engine must combine search, authentication and payment in one layer.

Alternative authentication ways

The way we acquire API keys were built for a human using internet but they won’t work in an agent first world. Here’s why:

• Inefficient: The agentic internet is API-first, but traditional API key management does not scale. Humans must sign contracts, register accounts, and manage credentials across multiple portals—a process that becomes unsustainable.

• Spam and Identity Issues: API keys don't verify whether requests come from real users or agents, making access control unreliable.

• Monetization: Traditional API access relies on contracts and credit cards, which aren’t suited for pay-as-you-go micropayments.

Solution: TaskNet is a task engine that enables AI agents to authenticate without registering with API portals by signing transactions directly on the blockchain. Payments serve as both access control and rate limiting, ensuring security and making it spam resistant. Users can do the rest of API calls offchain.

TaskNet: The Agent Payment Network

TaskNet is redefining the role of AI agents by merging task execution with built-in payments.

It provides a seamless infrastructure where agents can:

• Transactions via micropayments

• Authenticate on-chain (no API keys)

• Pay the service provider directly

• Search for services via an open marketplace

How Task Engines Will Work

Take booking a flight as an example. An AI agent using TaskNet will first discover flight providers and authenticate to access their APIs. The agent will then query these APIs off-chain to compare options. Once it selects a service, the user’s identity is only revealed at the point of booking, ensuring privacy.

With stablecoins for payments and a simple API-first interaction, the AI agent seamlessly completes the transaction. The agent handles authentication, payment, and identity verification in one step.

TaskNet enables businesses and API providers to adapt to the agentic era by offering authentication tools, a task engine for discovery, and payment routing that connects AI agents to services effortlessly.

The Future of the Agentic Internet

AI agents will outnumber human users and dominate the digital economy, requiring instant, permissionless access to services. The traditional model of search and payments is simply not a fit for this new agentic phase of the internet. TaskNet is at the forefront of building tools for the agentic internet.

The agentic internet is not the future, it is already here.