Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has proposed Nightframes, a private-computing concept for keeping AI agents active on users’ behalf, as he argues they should prioritize owners over platform operators.
At Midnight City: Tokyo on Oct. 10, Hoskinson described a computer whose owner could direct the software running on it. “It follows your intentions. And most importantly, it’s provable,” he said.
Nightframes could host agents that stay online, connect with services and handle tasks such as repeated decisions or payments. Hoskinson contrasted that approach with smart contracts, which execute preset instructions. He said agents should put users’ interests ahead of the platforms they interact with.
He used his own accounts to illustrate the idea: an AI review of payments found more than 115 subscriptions. He called them “vampire subscriptions” and used the example to illustrate a financial task an agent might handle.
Midnight provides the network context for the proposal. Its privacy-focused blockchain is designed to let applications use sensitive information while limiting what they expose. Nightframes remains a proposal.
