Avalanche Treasury Company CEO Bart Smith anticipates that the proliferation of AI agents within financial markets will challenge the assumption that block space remains virtually boundless.
“If we achieve even the conservative projections for agentic participation as AI enters financial markets, those operations will entirely migrate to blockchains as well,” Smith shared with The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson during a Wednesday conversation at the Avalanche Summit in New York. “There is simply insufficient block space. Furthermore, block space is no longer limitless.”
Smith further contended that this anticipated demand for block space will likely heighten the importance of the technical distinctions separating Layer 1 networks such as Avalanche (AVAX), Solana, and Ethereum.
“In an abstract sense, countless subtle variances exist among Solana, Avalanche, Ethereum, and alternative L1s,” Smith explained, noting that current users can largely ignore these differences due to abundant network capacity. “Those distinctions are about to become critical.”
The former Susquehanna Crypto CEO, who dedicated nearly 14 years to the trading firm prior to leading Avalanche Treasury Co., expressed his conviction that Avalanche is ideally positioned for enterprise use cases centered around privacy and security.
Additionally, Smith mentioned that he would be astonished if traditional markets fail to operate 24 hours a day, five days a week by mid-2027, asserting that legacy financial architecture lacks the capacity to support a transition to continuous trading.
“A fresh infrastructure must be established, and that foundation will not be constructed through legacy methods,” Smith stated. “It will be built upon blockchains.”
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/ecosystems/2026-09-17-not-enough-block-space-avalanche-treasury-ceo-says-ai-agents-crunch-blockchain-capacity-415397.
