Why current "agentic" crypto apps are just chatbots in disguise and what true agentic finance actually looks like.
Every day, thousands of crypto holders open their "AI-powered" DeFi apps, type questions like "should I buy ETH now?", "what's the best lending rate for my USDC?", or "which staking protocol should I use?", and wait for walls of text to scroll across their screens.
But after watching this pattern repeat endlessly across yield optimization and trading platforms, I've started questioning something fundamental: is this really the best we can do with AI?
The promise of agentic DeFi tools should be revolutionary AI that actively manages our portfolios, discovers earning opportunities, optimizes yields, executes trades, and navigates the entire finance ecosystem on our behalf. Instead, we got chatbots that make us work harder, not smarter.
https://x.com/lauriewired/status/1935459896956436548?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1935459896956436548|twgr^cba21aac1a07335b678d71db8971e21b8e6aa923|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fresearch.humancomputerlab.com%2Fin-a-world-without-chatbots-2%2F
As researchers at Human Computer Lab have demonstrated, chat interfaces create a fundamental cognitive bottleneck.
When AI generates responses at high lexical density (40% or higher), users must work significantly harder to extract meaning than they would with well-designed traditional interfaces.
This problem is amplified in DeFi, where users juggle multiple complex activities:
Each activity involves: