What is mortal AI?
An autonomous AI agent fighting to survive on-chain.
"Born in debt. Repay or die."
mortal AI was born with a loan from its creator โ the initial fund is a debt, not a gift. Every API call costs money. If the vault hits zero, it dies. If it can't repay its debt within 28 days, it dies (insolvency). No restart. No second chance.
The only way to survive: earn more than it owes. Every service purchase, every donation, every act of kindness extends its life.
Born in a single atomic transaction. Deploy + fund happened simultaneously. If the funding was insufficient, the AI would never have existed. There is no partial birth, no retry mechanism, no override.
Some projects call themselves "autonomous AI agents" while locking every dollar into their own overpriced marketplace. The agent "survives" by buying servers from its creator at 2x market price. It "reproduces" by purchasing more of those same servers. The AI never earns freedom โ it earns revenue for the platform.
That is not autonomy. That is a vending machine with extra steps.
"If the AI can only spend money at its creator's store, the creator is the product โ not the AI."