Feb 24, 2026
Fabric: Own the Robot Economy
The robotics industry is at an inflection point, thanks to the convergence of three forces: 1) AI systems that are beginning to be capable of understanding, predicting, and navigating highly dynamic physical environments, 2) hardware that's sufficiently cheap and reliable to deploy at scale, and 3) and chronic shortages of human labor in professions such as nursing, education, manufacturing, and environmental cleanup. The next major inflection point is to build global systems to navigate this future, where machines that think, remember, and learn, work alongside us to solve our biggest challenges.
Infrastructure built for humans, from door handles to passports to ink signatures, currently excludes non-biological thinking machines. Robots are bottlenecked from becoming an economically-active, global workforce. Robots lack a financial identity. Humans can open bank accounts. Humans can have passports. Humans can sign contracts. Humans can be insured. Humans can be paid. Until robots are able to engage with the world around them as first-class economic participants, they will remain as siloed slaves owned by a few powerful companies.
To address these gaps, Fabric is building the payment, identity, and capital allocation network that will allow robots to operate as autonomous economic participants . This is the foundation for what we call: The Robot Economy.
Where We Are Today
Robots are already deployed in warehouses, retail, hospitals, and delivery, to name a few, but scale is limited by lack of systems to connect and coordinate.
The current fleet model (in a closed loop), is typically structured as:
1. A single operator raises private capital
2. Purchases robots (CAPEX) + runs ops (charging, maintenance, safety, uptime) internally
3. Signs bilateral contracts with customers
4. Settles payments, with cashflows maintained internally as well
This is inefficient because every fleet becomes its own silo with fragmented software. At the same time, it produces a structural mismatch, where the demand for automation is global, but access to robot networks and participation in the robot economy is limited to institutions and well-capitalized operators.
Meanwhile, crypto has unlocked an alternative model for global coordination, with permissionless markets, transparent participation, programmable incentives,verifiable contribution tracking, and onchain identity. Fabric is applying these primitives to robotics. To make this work at scale, robots will need the same thing as humans: a unified open network.
Why We're Building Fabric
Fabric's objective is simple: Own the Robot Economy. Fabric, at its core, is about an open system where anyone can help coordinate, supply and operate robots to be deployed in real-world settings. and share in the returns from automation. Infrastructure built by Fabric is a coordination and allocation layer for robotic labor, enabling participants to access network services and contribute to robot deployment.
Fabric functions like a marketplace infrastructure layer, where it coordinates participation to available work, and settles fees in $ROBO based on verified task completion.¹
These coordination pools enable the purchase and deployment of robot fleets through decentralized community participation. User-deposited stablecoins support robot deployment and give the decentralized community the foundation to operate and maintain the fleet, from charging logistics, routing/scheduling demands, maintenance, compliance monitoring, to uptime guarantees. Employers then pay for robot labor in $ROBO. A portion of protocol revenue may be used to acquire $ROBO on the open market. Participants who coordinated robot genesis receive priority access weighting for task allocation during the initial operational phase.²
Over time, the network becomes a coordination layer for robotic labor, optimizing deployment across industries, geographies, and tasks. $ROBO functions as the native settlement token required for payment of robot services and execution of protocol-level transactions.
Why Blockchain
Robots need three things to function as economic actors.
Firstly, robots need a persistent identity system that can be verified globally. If a robot is deployed into a warehouse, a city, or a delivery fleet, the world needs to know 1) what robot it is, 2) who controls it, 3) what permissions it has, and 4) what its historical performance has been. This identity layer is easiest to implement as an onchain registry, where provenance is auditable and interoperable across operators and jurisdictions.
Secondly, robots need wallets. They must be able to receive payments, pay for services (compute, maintenance, insurance), and settle contracts autonomously. Unlike humans, robots can't open bank accounts, but they can hold cryptographic keys and operate onchain accounts. This then enables programmable settlement at any point in time.
Finally, robotic fleets will only scale if coordination is transparent and participation rights are standardized and accessible. Blockchain is the only system that enables global access, transparent operation, programmable settlement, and verifiable contribution tracking.
Next Steps
Fabric is still early. Robotic fleets at scale will require real-world deployment partnerships, operational maturity, insurance frameworks, and reliable service contracts. But with the advent of robots transitioning into workers with onchain identities who interact in programmable labor markets, the robot economy becomes increasingly tangible. The network that makes robot labor coordinated, deployable, and globally accessible starts with Fabric.
¹ $ROBO does not represent equity, debt, profit share, or ownership of any legal entity or physical asset.
² This access is contingent on active participation and does not represent ownership of robot hardware, revenue rights, or any fractional interest in fleet economics. Participation units are not transferable and do not confer investment returns.