What are the practical building blocks for independent AI agents?

Hey everyone, I've been falling down a sci-fi rabbit hole lately, thinking about the long-term future of AI. The common trope is that AI will eventually become independent entities, acting on their own behalf in the world.

But moving past the philosophy, I got stuck on a very practical, almost mundane question: If an agent were to act independently, what would it own?

How would it pay for its own API calls, its server time, or even buy a new dataset? It can't exactly open a Bank of America account or get a driver's license to prove its identity. It seems like there's a fundamental gap between our current digital infrastructure, which is built for humans, and what a truly autonomous agent would need to operate.

This thought experiment led me to explore how concepts from Web3, like Decentralized IDs (DIDs) for identity and smart contract wallets for assets, could be a natural fit. It feels like this infrastructure is almost purpose-built for non-human actors.

I started tinkering with this idea, building a small project to see if an SDK could make it easy to give a Python agent its own unique on-chain identity and a secure, isolated "wallet." The goal is to let it own things and interact with services without ever touching my personal keys or accounts. I've been calling it CirtusAI.

But this is a huge, complex topic, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot. So my questions for this community are:

1. Do you think this "identity and asset" problem is a real barrier to AI autonomy?

2. What are the biggest security or ethical risks you see in an approach like this?

3. Am I crazy, or is the idea of "blockchain as the native world for AI" a concept with real legs?

Would love to hear your thoughts and criticisms on this whole idea. Thanks!