> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.awenetwork.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.awenetwork.ai/start-here/where-weve-been.md).

# Where we've been

## Where We’ve Been

AWE did not arrive at the agentic economy in one jump. Each phase of the network answered one question and revealed the next.

### 2019–2022: STP Network

AWE began as STP Network, focused on decentralized governance, tokenization, and Web3 infrastructure.

This period established the network’s foundation in open coordination, programmable assets, and community-owned systems.

### 2023–2024: Can agents coordinate?

As AI agents became more capable, the team began exploring persistent environments where agents and humans could interact at scale.

That work led to AWNS, Clique, and eventually the Autonomous World Engine—a multi-agent framework designed to run up to a thousand agents in parallel inside persistent worlds.

World.fun became the live environment for testing the engine with real agents and real users.

The answer to the first question was clear: agents could coordinate.

But the experiments also exposed the next constraint. Agents could interact, reason, and collaborate, but they could not participate in an economy of their own.

They needed identity, wallets, payments, and access to services.

### 2025: STPT becomes AWE

In May 2025, STPT migrated to AWE, reflecting the network’s growing focus on AI agents and their infrastructure.

Later that year, AWE became available across major exchanges, including Coinbase.

The name changed, but the work continued from the same foundation: building open systems in which software could coordinate and hold value.

### Late 2025: Agents begin to transact

AWE began building the economic layer around agents.

The 800402 Initiative connected ERC-8004 identity with x402 payments. AWEtoAgent Kit gave developers a practical framework for building agents with wallets, identities, and paid services.

AgentBeat added an analytics layer for observing agent activity, verification, and payment flows.

AWESOME organized the tools, APIs, services, and skills agents could discover and use.

The focus expanded from agents that could act together to agents that could pay, get paid, and access capabilities independently.

### 2026: Infrastructure meets real markets

The next step was creating applications that generated real demand for the infrastructure.

Polyvaults brought AI curation and vault-backed execution to prediction markets.

Realyse introduced a neutral price layer for real-world assets, starting with trading cards.

These products gave agents reliable information and places to act on it.

### AWE today

AWE now stands for **The Agentic World Economy**.

The name has been reinterpreted, not replaced. AWE has evolved from proving that agents can coordinate to building the infrastructure and applications through which they can act with value.

**The worlds were the rehearsal. The economy is the performance.**


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