For a long time, when we talked about wallets, we were mostly talking about assets.
Where should BTC be stored? How do you transfer ETH? How should NFTs be managed? How do users access and use DeFi or RWAs? For most crypto users, a wallet was, in a sense, their gateway to assets.
But AI is changing this.
When users can describe what they need in natural language, and when AI can help break down the steps required to complete an action, the role of the wallet also begins to change. This has become especially clear over the past six months. A wallet is increasingly becoming the command center for a user’s digital world.
From this perspective, the real question for wallets in the AI era may not be whether they can do more things on behalf of users. It is this: when more and more actions can be automated, how can users continue to understand each interaction and retain ultimate control?
This is the new question imToken continues to answer as it enters its next decade.
1. The New Wallet Narrative: From an Asset Entry Point to a Personal Digital Hub
If you had told an Ethereum user in 2016 that ten years later, they could simply type into a chat box, “Help me generate a minimalist wallet that only shows NFTs, AI-related tokens, and common actions,” and then receive an app that could run on a testnet, they would probably think you were a project founder who could not even write a convincing whitepaper.
But by 2026, this no longer feels like science fiction.
If you recently took part in imToken’s 10th anniversary event, you may have seen something similar already becoming possible: a user only needs to describe their need in natural language, and an initial wallet interface can be generated, showing NFTs, AI tokens, and common actions such as Receive, Sign, and Swap.
“Your Digital World, Under Your Control” is a fitting way to summarize imToken’s new narrative for its tenth anniversary. It is not about packaging the wallet as a platform that does everything. Rather, it recognizes that as the digital world users enter becomes more complex, they need a long-term, trusted, secure, and clear entry point that remains under their own control.
That entry point has been the wallet, and the wallet will continue to evolve into it. The more complex the digital world becomes, the more it needs a trusted starting point.
In the past, wallets mainly helped users prove that “these assets belong to me.” Whether it was ETH, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, DeFi positions, or later RWA assets, the wallet’s core role was to serve as an asset container and a signing entry point.
But in the AI era, wallets also need to help users confirm more things: Do these identities belong to me? Are these authorizations managed by me? Do I understand these actions? Are these automated workflows still within my control boundaries?
This is the core of the “personal digital hub” narrative. It also means the wallet’s next stage is not merely to remain a wallet, but to become the foundational interface for entering the digital world.
Take imToken as an example. If we divide its past decade into three stages, a clear trajectory emerges:
From 2016 to 2023, the wallet was a container for assets. Starting from the Ethereum ecosystem and expanding alongside ERC-20 tokens, DeFi, NFTs, and other asset forms, the core question was simple: how to keep private keys as safely as possible on users’ own devices, and how to make every newly emerging token reliably fit into the same container. At this stage, users cared most about whether assets could be stored safely and accessed or moved out smoothly.
From 2024 to 2025, wallets began to stand at a paradigm shift. Tokens were no longer just assets. They started to extend toward identity, data, agents, and permission relationships. Ethereum’s narrative also moved beyond scaling and toward directions closer to user experience, such as account abstraction. As the way users interact with blockchains began to be rewritten, the wallet, once a relatively stable piece of the puzzle, began to shift significantly for the first time.
From 2026 onward, wallets are moving toward the role of a “personal digital hub.” As AI begins to participate in app generation, transaction understanding, risk detection, and automated execution, the wallet is no longer just a tool being used. It is becoming more like each person’s digital command center, coordinating collaboration between users and AI agents.
These three stages can be summed up in one sentence: tokens evolve, control remains.
Asset forms will change. Interaction models will change. AI capabilities will change. But what the wallet must protect remains the same: the user’s ultimate control over their own digital world.
2. Functionality Is Not the Destination. Security Is the Foundation.
Take imToken’s 10th anniversary AI co-creation initiative as an example. What matters most is not simply “generating a wallet interface with AI,” but how it brings the question of how wallets should work with AI down to a more foundational level.
One thing needs to be made clear first: the AI direction imToken has shown so far is not the radical path of “handing private keys to AI and letting AI trade automatically for you.” Instead, it focuses on three more practical directions: allowing users to participate in wallet co-creation through natural language, making the wallet’s underlying capabilities easier for developers and AI to access, and embedding security rules into generation and interaction from the start.
We believe this path is more consistent with how wallets should evolve.
Because a wallet is not an ordinary app. If an ordinary app gets a button wrong, the result may simply be a poor user experience. But if a wallet gets a signature, an authorization, or a private key handling process wrong, it may lead to real asset loss. That is why wallets in the AI era cannot focus only on generating things quickly. They must also be secure by design, easy to understand, and verifiable.
One of the most concrete steps is to further open Token Core capabilities to co-creation scenarios. For everyday users, Token Core may sound technical, but it can be understood as the “heart” of the imToken wallet. It handles the wallet’s most essential capabilities, such as private key and keystore management, address generation, transaction signing, and multi-chain support.
In simple terms, wallet interfaces can take many forms. But what truly determines whether a wallet can securely manage assets, sign correctly, and run reliably across different chains is this underlying “heart.”
Token Core was open-sourced as early as 2018. At the time, it mainly served imToken’s own mobile wallet, supporting multi-chain asset management and signing on iOS and Android. Today, Token Core has evolved into a wallet core library that supports multiple public chains and cross-platform calls.
What is especially worth noting in the tenth anniversary-related branch is the emergence of a WebAssembly version.
WebAssembly sounds technical. In plain language, WebAssembly makes it easier for core wallet capabilities that used to run mostly in apps or local environments to run in the browser. As a result, web-based wallet demos, AI-generated wallet applications, and wallet prototypes built by developers may be able to call underlying wallet capabilities more directly.
The significance is that the wallet no longer has to be just a collection of features inside a closed app. It can become a more open and composable set of foundational capabilities. Alongside this, several easier-to-understand tools have also appeared:
- The Token Core CLI demo can be understood as a “command-line demo console.” It breaks down core wallet actions, such as creating a wallet, deriving addresses, managing keystores, and signing transactions, so developers and AI can see more clearly what the wallet is doing under the hood.
- Token UI can be understood as a “wallet interface template library.” Built on imToken’s design system, it helps participants build wallet-like interfaces more quickly. Users can ask AI to generate a wallet interface prototype without having to design every button, list, and asset card from scratch.
- security/SKILL.md is more like a “wallet security manual” written specifically for AI coding assistants. When AI generates code involving seed phrases, private keys, signatures, or authorizations, it cannot simply focus on making the feature work. It must first understand the hard boundaries, and any asset-related operation must require user confirmation.
These open-source initiatives may differ from how many people used to think about wallet competition.
In the past, it was easy to think of a wallet as an app: whoever supported more chains, had a better-looking interface, and offered more complete DApp entry points had the advantage. But after the arrival of the AI era, wallet competition may take a different form: whoever can provide more trusted underlying capabilities, help users and developers compose wallet functions more safely, and still maintain security boundaries when AI generates experiences will be better positioned to become the foundation of users’ digital worlds.
This is why imToken’s AI efforts should not be reduced to “an AI wallet-generation event.” It is actually answering a more foundational question: when AI can generate more wallet interfaces, interactions, and applications, what must remain stable? What can be opened to users and the community for recomposition? And what must be constrained by security rules?
imToken’s answer is: trust belongs in the core, control belongs to the user, and innovation belongs to the community.
3. The New Map for Crypto Users: From Natural Language Entry Points to Agent Boundary Management
What, then, can we expect Web3 wallets to look like over the next decade?
If we bring the two threads above together, one side is imToken bringing the wallet core, UI templates, and security rules to users and developers. The other side is AI gaining stronger understanding and orchestration capabilities between users and blockchains. In this process, the position of an ordinary crypto user is undergoing a very interesting shift.
In the past, users mostly adapted to wallets.
Users used whatever homepage the wallet provided, clicked the features it supported, and followed its transaction flow step by step. Even heavy users were often just switching back and forth between fixed functions.
But with AI involved, wallets may increasingly adapt to users. This means the Web3 wallet of the next decade may not simply have more and more features. Instead, its form may become increasingly personalized.
- You may no longer need to tolerate a wallet homepage that looks the same for everyone. If you are a DeFi power user, you could ask AI to generate a minimalist interface focused only on yield, risk, and position changes, bringing together major positions across chains, yield rates, redemption timelines, and risk status.
- If you only care about stablecoin inflows and outflows, your wallet homepage could show only your USDC and USDT balances, recent incoming payments, and frequently used receiving addresses, without distracting you with irrelevant assets and entry points.
- If you are deeply involved in LSTs or LRTs, the wallet could bring the real ETH positions, yields, exit windows, and potential risks behind different staking tokens into a clearer dashboard.
- If you simply want to set up a small wallet for a family member, it could keep only receiving, sending, and balance display, while hiding complex DApps, authorizations, and cross-chain features.
The underlying signing, address, and transfer logic does not change. What changes is the upper-layer experience. In short, a wallet is no longer just a standardized product. It becomes a digital tool assembled from the wallet core, UI Kit, and personal needs.
Looking further ahead, the next generation of crypto users may enter an on-chain world populated by many AI agents.
Your AI assistant may scan stablecoin pool spreads for you every day. Your research agent may run small tests when a new protocol launches. Your payment agent may handle subscriptions, refunds, and payment splitting. Your asset management agent may remind you to rebalance according to rules you set.
These scenarios may sound futuristic, but they do not mean users should hand their private keys to AI. Quite the opposite: the stronger agents become, the more important wallets become. A healthy relationship between AI and wallets is not about letting agents take unlimited control of user assets. It is about allowing agents to make requests, while the wallet translates those requests into transaction details users can understand and hands the final confirmation back to the user.
In other words, AI agents can discover opportunities, make suggestions, and generate paths. The wallet must be responsible for risk warnings, permission constraints, and final signatures.
Overall, AI will make wallets smarter and on-chain actions smoother. This is a major shift, and it has only just begun.
Final Thoughts
The underlying logic of the crypto world has always been built on user control. The question of private keys will not disappear because of AI. On the contrary, it will become even more important.
This is where imToken’s new narrative, and the truly important direction of the wallet sector, come into focus.
Especially as the digital world expands from assets to identity and AI agents, users will still need a trusted entry point that helps them understand, confirm, and control every digital action they take. From a trusted main wallet to a personal digital hub, this is not conceptual packaging. It is the natural extension of the wallet’s role in a new technological environment.
Perhaps when we look back at 2026 from 2036, we will see a somewhat counterintuitive fact: the next decade of wallets will not only be about more powerful features. Users will no longer simply be the people services are built for; they will become the ones who define those services.
Your digital world, under your control.