For human and agents, Animoca’s Moca Chain mainnet goes live

Moca Network, the identity network of Animoca Brands, has launched Moca Chain mainnet, providing the infrastructure for its push into digital credentials, payments and, eventually, transactions carried out by AI agents.

Announced on 29th September, the Layer 1 blockchain (EVM chain ID 2288) supports Ethereum development tools and uses the MOCA token for transaction fees and governance. Its identity functions allow businesses to issue, verify, update and revoke credentials through shared infrastructure. Zero-knowledge proof verification is also available at launch.

The intended user experience is straightforward. A business verifies something about a customer, such as their age, membership status or completion of identity checks, and issues a credential. With that customer’s consent, another participating business can confirm the relevant fact without receiving the underlying documents.

Therefore, someone could demonstrate that they qualify for a service without repeatedly submitting a passport. Credentials could also represent gaming achievements, ticket ownership or loyalty status, allowing businesses to recognize customers whose relevant history was established elsewhere.

“Users should not be forced to surrender sensitive personal information redundantly every time they use a new service and platform,” commented Animoca’s executive chairman Yat Siu.

“Not only is the process time-consuming and tedious, but it also stifles competition by erecting barriers to alternative merchants and providers, keeping users locked in to the platforms where they are already authenticated.

“As more and more AI agents navigate the digital economy on behalf of more and more people, Moca Chain is ideally positioned to provide individuals with sovereign ownership of their credentials, and to give businesses a mechanism that can establish trust without unnecessary data custody.”

But this isn’t just a blockchain vision. There’s a commercial model behind it too. Through Animoca’s AIR Identity platform, issuers can charge when partners verify their credentials, potentially generating additional revenue from checks already completed. Businesses requesting verification pay for confirmation, while users decide whether to share the proof.

AIR is the integration suite through which businesses access the network. Alongside identity, it offers payment and loyalty products. AIR Money connects applications to services including payments, withdrawals and cards, supplied through third-party providers, with availability depending on integration and jurisdiction. Its checkout offering includes fiat, stablecoins and loyalty points.

The immediate business opportunity is therefore reducing repeated onboarding and making existing customer relationships useful across participating services. The blockchain supplies common infrastructure, while adoption depends on businesses finding those connections commercially worthwhile.

AI agents could significantly expand that opportunity.

An agent shopping or booking on someone’s behalf needs to establish more than its ability to send money. The receiving business needs evidence of whose instructions it is following, whether its permission remains valid and whether the proposed action falls within that permission.

Moca’s planned delegation system would connect agents to users’ AIR credentials, with authority limited by scope and time and capable of being revoked. A merchant could then recognize the customer behind an agent and extend their pricing, access or membership benefits. However, the launch announcement explicitly places this functionality on the roadmap; it is not a mainnet launch feature.

For example, an agent might eventually book a hotel within an agreed budget while proving its user qualifies for a membership discount. This illustrates the ambition: combining payment permission with portable customer credentials.

The competitive landscape already contains overlapping approaches. Coinbase offers agent wallets with spending limits. Google’s AP2 provides signed mandates for authorized purchases and payments, while Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol helps merchants recognize agents and receive customer and payment identifiers.

Moca’s opportunity lies in the combination of credential sharing, payments and loyalty, and in persuading enough businesses to accept it.

The practical test will be whether customers encounter fewer repeated checks, whether merchants gain useful business and whether credential issuers earn recurring revenue. Agents could increase the frequency of those interactions, but permission must still be enforced by the services processing each action.

Animoca BrandsMoca ChainYat Siu