Ex-Cointelegraph Head Named Phase CEO; Liability for Agent Payments Undefined

On November 11, Phase, a blockchain designed for AI agents, appointed Yana Prikhodchenko, previously Cointelegraph's CEO, as its co-founder and chief executive. With a decade in banking and insurance behind her, Prikhodchenko now leads a network where software makes payments autonomously.

This change puts the burden on the party funding the agents. Users' Tether (USDT) gets swapped for a bridged token, USDT.e, which is collateralized by deposits in Phase's bridge address. Currently, that token cannot be moved back to its home chain.

Why Does Agent Infrastructure Need a New Blockchain?

Prikhodchenko disclosed her departure from Cointelegraph via LinkedIn, ending nearly five years with the media organization.

Prior to her crypto media role, she worked over ten years at financial institutions and insurance companies such as Allianz. In that environment, each payment can be traced to a specific customer.

Phase activated its mainnet on October 29. According to its documentation, agents fund themselves by transferring USDT from Ethereum, Base, or three additional chains. No registration or API key is necessary, as the wallet initiating the deposit serves as the account.

Phase imposes limits on incoming funds. The bridge processes deposits up to 1,000 USDT at a time and retains any amount above that. Total credits are restricted to 10,000 USDT within 24 hours, with surplus amounts held for the next cycle.

In a statement about her appointment, Prikhodchenko described the issue as a technical deficiency.

“AI agents are moving from answering questions to performing real tasks on our behalf, but the infrastructure they depend on was not built for autonomous systems,” Prikhodchenko, co-founder and CEO of Phase, told BeInCrypto.

However, the statement does not clarify why a new blockchain is needed instead of utilizing existing cloud and payment infrastructure.

Can the Phase CEO Make Agent Payments Bankable?

In the banking sector where Prikhodchenko built her career, a payment network is evaluated based on who has custody of funds, who backs the enterprise, and who covers losses when errors occur. Phase has not yet resolved all three.

Custody is the first issue. Deposits convert to USDT.e, a bridged token with a one-to-one backing from USDT in Phase's bridge address. Since the bridge currently functions only one-way, those who fund agents can only use USDT.e within Phase until withdrawals are enabled, and its full value depends on that deposit address.

The financial backing of the company is also concentrated. Phase's sole disclosed investor is founder Kirill Eves, who provided the $45 million used for the October 29 mainnet launch. Prikhodchenko became co-founder two weeks after that. Phase's token page allocates 25% of the PHASE supply to the core team, but whether her position comes with a portion of that allocation is not known.

The token's value is likewise uncertain. Validators on the chain using phones earn PHASE, but the token is not yet listed on CoinGecko, so the dollar equivalent per phone remains unclear.

The biggest shortfall is liability. Phase Router, which routes agent queries among AI models, charges each request via x402, a payment standard created by Coinbase. Similar to the bridge, this billing system links payments to wallets instead of to known customers.

Phase is not unique in this regard. It is among a number of networks transitioning AI agent blockchain payments from theory to operational use, and the identical issue applies to all: who bears responsibility if an agent sends funds to the wrong recipient?

BeInCrypto has reached out to Prikhodchenko to clarify where Phase draws the line on liability. Her response will indicate whether agent payment networks will follow banking accountability standards or create their own.