CIWM Early Careers Ambassador Laura Fisher, Contract Operations Manager at FCC Environment, explains battery fires can be prevented and their impact on circular economy efforts.

When you think of batteries, what first comes to mind? Perhaps it’s the AA batteries in the back of the TV remote, but what about your smart gadget, electric toothbrush or even birthday card? Batteries are used more than you think.

The UK has worked tirelessly to increase and simplify recycling across the country. Successive governments have introduced legislation to ensure that there is circularity amongst the sector, which has reshaped how materials are produced, used, reused and recycled.

The sector is working hard to keep valuable resources in circulation for longer, but the waste streams we’re handling are becoming increasingly complex, with the rapid growth of battery-powered devices being one of the biggest contributors.

Lithium-ion batteries appear constantly in day-to-day life – from smartphones to children’s toys to disposable vapes – a lot of the time without full understanding from the consumer.

Their rise is due to the push towards, but they’re creating a significant risk to the waste and resource sector. Battery-related fires impact collection services, recycling facilities and waste transfer operations.

Fires caused by a binned battery or vape have been publicly reported in the UK every nine days this year, and incidents are are still increasing, creating a risk to people, infrastructure and environment.

They are becoming a significant barrier to delivering a safe and resilient circular economy. Any item containing a lithium-ion battery was designed to be convenient for the consumer; however, limited public awareness means many of these items continue to be disposed of incorrectly.

Once these batteries enter a collection vehicle or the processing facility, they become a hidden and impending ignition source. Lithium-ion batteries tend to ignite following damage or overheating. This process is known as thermal runaway and creates intense heat, which then causes fire to spread rapidly to surrounding materials.

Throughout all parts of the waste collection, sorting and treatment process, there is potential for batteries to be damaged. In the back of the collection vehicles, the waste is compacted. While inside a transfer station, the waste is moved around by large loading shovels.

Once transported to the sorting facilities, the material is tossed around inside trommels, screens and shredders. This means that a huge number of staff across the waste and resource sector are exposed to this risk throughout the entire process, and while there are several emergency procedures in place to help minimise the consequences, we as a sector cannot manage the root cause.

The immediate concern when it comes to these batteries is the safety of employees, contractors and emergency workers. However, the consequences extend far beyond this.

A fire at a Materials Recycling Facility can result in significant damage to buildings and equipment, leading to prolonged shutdowns and then substantial financial losses for local councils and waste companies. All this subsequently impacts residents, sometimes without their full understanding.

There are also the associated environmental costs – large volumes of recyclable materials being destroyed, contaminated fire water and emissions being released are also an increased concern from battery fires.

Our sector measures success through recycling rates, carbon savings and resource efficiency. However, when facilities are damaged by fires, the circular economy suffers.

In response to the growing battery concern, the waste and recycling sector has invested heavily to tackle this challenge. Many sites are now utilising thermal imaging cameras, heat detection systems and automated fire suppression.

Staff training has also increased, so employees know how to identify batteries, and inspections have increased. While these have helped to reduce the risk, they only tackle the consequences of battery fires as opposed to the root cause. Waste operators can’t solve this problem alone; batteries must be prevented from entering the waste stream in the first place.

Addressing the growing problem of battery fires requires action from across the entire product lifecycle. The responsibility cannot sit solely with the waste and resource sector; it needs to be shared by everyone involved with designing, manufacturing, selling, using and recovering these battery-powered products.

First, products need to be designed with safe end-of-life management in mind. Batteries must be clearly labelled, so they’re easily identifiable and simpler to remove. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) presents an opportunity to drive these improvements and place greater emphasis on safe recovery and disposal.

Second, battery recycling must be made convenient for consumers. Having consistent collection systems and accessible and recognisable drop-off points are essential if we are to successfully divert batteries and battery-powered products from residual waste streams.

Third, greater public awareness is needed. The majority of people don’t know how many everyday items contain lithium-ion batteries or how to dispose of them safely. Clear messaging locally and nationally is required if we want behaviours to change.

Battery fires highlight an important message for the circular economy: sustainability and safety are intrinsically linked. The waste and resource sector has invested heavily in protecting people, infrastructure and the environment from this hidden risk, but we cannot continue alone.

Long-term success depends on safety being considered at every stage and not being treated as an afterthought. If the circular economy is to thrive and reach its full potential, it must be built on systems that are not only sustainable but also safe.

After all, safety is not a barrier to sustainability; it is what makes sustainability possible.

The post Battery fires in recycling: The hidden risk to the circular economy appeared first on Circular Online.

All of us once believed that artificial intelligence will eventually take over the world with robots and intelligent technology. You can see how AI has been changing our lives in the examples of virtual assistants, smart manufacturing lines and wealth management apps. If you want to become an AI agent manager, then you have picked one of the most promising career paths in AI. The future of AI will revolve around agents and the ability to orchestrate AI agents will make you an invaluable asset for companies.

• The 2026 State of AI Agents report by Claude reveals that 80% of organizations have achieved economic returns from agentic AI deployments (Source).        
• A report by Databricks pointed out a 327% growth in number of enterprises shifting towards multi-agent systems from single chatbots (Source).
• Gartner has predicted that 40% of agentic AI projects will be scrapped by the end of 2027 (Source). 

You can clearly notice the growing demand for AI agents and the lack of skilled resources can restrict the long-term adoption of agentic AI. We are in the era of AI agents and using prompt engineering alone to talk with language models for different tasks is not enough. As AI agents offer opportunities to create a new digital workforce, you can become AI agent managers and drive innovation. You must understand the role of AI agent manager and have a clear roadmap to become a successful one in 2026.  

Who is the AI Agent Manager?

The first thing you need to pursue the AI agent manager career path is to understand the responsibilities of one. AI agents have emerged as one of the biggest trends in the AI space in 2026 with many organizations adopting them. You must know that AI agents operate independently without human intervention to select tools and achieve specific goals. 

The search for answers to “How to become a manager of AI agents?” will help you discover that the AI agent manager must fulfill various responsibilities. AI agent managers have to,

• Design the environment in which AI agents will operate.
• Define the personalities and constraints for the AI agents.
• Ensure safeguards against AI hallucination and measuring ROI.

As an AI agent manager, you have to focus more on guiding the evolution of AI with a blend of technical fluency and strategic business acumen. AI agent managers ensure that one agent hands off accurate data to another agent without losing context. You will have to monitor performance metrics to measure ROI and also perform tests to identify potential biases or security vulnerabilities. Most important of all, an AI agent manager serves as the bridge between human stakeholders and AI agents by translating business goals into effective agentic AI workflows.    

Get Certified AI Agents Manager (CAIAM) Certified — Gain in-demand skills to manage agentic AI workflows across the full AI agent lifecycle and lead the future of intelligent automation

Understanding the Essential Steps to Become an AI Agent Manager

The growing use of AI agents is not new to someone who has been staying updated with trends in the AI space. It is also important to note that companies are becoming more cautious about agentic AI deployments. Therefore, candidates preparing for AI agent manager jobs must have exactly what it takes to become a successful agentic AI manager. You can use a roadmap designed with suggestions from top experts to pursue one of the most in-demand roles in the AI job market now.

1. Build a Strong Foundation of Technical Fluency

Many of you may have assumed that becoming an AI agent manager will require advanced data science skills. The good news is that learning about the relevant technical concepts for AI agents is enough to enhance technical fluency. You can begin with LLM mechanics and understand concepts of context windows, temperature settings, and tokens. It is important to learn the difference between base models and fine-tuned models to choose the ideal options for agentic AI systems.

The technical skills required for AI agent manager roles also call for fluency in agentic frameworks such as LangChain or CrewAI. Agentic frameworks work just like operating systems for agents and you must know how to integrate tools in these frameworks to empower agents for different tasks. You must also have basic programming skills, especially in Python, to review the execution log of agents and identify discrepancies.

2. Embracing the Mindset of an Architect

The responsibilities of an AI agent manager clearly showcase that managing agents is not just about writing prompts. One of the prominent AI agent manager skills that you should not ignore is the ability to design effective workflows. The most common mistake by new agent managers revolves around burdening one agent with too many tasks. Professional AI agent managers know how to break complex goals into smaller and easily manageable tasks for different agents. The architect mindset will help you define the ideal tasks for different agents in a multi-agent setup and achieve results.

If you want a multi-agent system to write a research report, then you can assign each agent with distinct tasks. One agent can search for raw data while another verifies facts and sources and the next one synthesizes the data into a report. You should also know how to incorporate RLHF, or Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback loops in AI agent systems. The feedback loops will help you measure the performance of agents and help them improve continuously.

Enroll now in the Mastering Generative AI with LLMs Course to discover the different ways of using generative AI models to solve real-world problems.

3. Understanding Ethics and Risk in AI Agents

The roadmap for becoming AI agent managers will be incomplete without learning about ethics and risk management. You must remember that AI agents are also vulnerable to security breaches, primarily through prompt injection attacks. Malicious actors can trick an AI agent with access to internal email of a company to trick it into exposing sensitive data. AI agent managers should have the skills to implement robust security layers and sandboxing to safeguard agentic AI systems.

The next big problem for an AI agent manager emerges from bias and hallucinations. As an AI agent manager, you must know how to design and deploy agents to evaluate the work of creator agents. It will play a major role in monitoring and balancing the system according to benchmarks of mature AI deployments.

4. Creating Your Portfolio to Show Value 

If you want to land up the best jobs for AI agent managers, then you must have proof of your skills. Many candidates choose an AI agents certification program to obtain verified proof of their skills. However, you must also remember that employers will look for the ways in which you can achieve results.

The best option to build a strong AI agent manager portfolio is a multi-agent system project for task automation. You can also include case studies in your portfolio to showcase the ways in which you reduced costs of specific workflows. Your open-source contributions and certifications are also strong additions to your portfolio as AI agent managers.

5. Acquire the Essential Soft Skills

The human element in the job of AI agent managers calls for some crucial soft skills. You must have strategic intent and the ability to ask the right questions before crafting agentic AI systems. Without clear business goals, you are likely to produce inefficient AI agent systems. The combination of strategic intent and critical thinking can help you define ideal requirements to make your AI agents successful.

The most important soft skill that you must have as an AI agent manager is curiosity. You should always keep an eye on industry trends and updates with the help of latest research papers and articles. Details of new model releases and trends in agentic AI will help you stay relevant in a continuously evolving market.

Final Thoughts 

The journey of preparations to become an AI agent manager will require learning various skills. You must develop a strong foundation of technical skills, with fluency in LLM concepts, agentic frameworks, and basic programming. AI agent managers must also develop the mindset of an architect and know how to break down complex goals. The skillset of AI agent managers also includes soft skills, such as critical thinking, curiosity, and strategic intent. Most important of all, an AI agent manager must know how to address the elements of ethics and risk in agentic AI workflows. Learn more about AI agents and start your new career path in artificial intelligence now.

The post How to Become an AI Agents Manager? appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

68% of people would be likely to return drinks containers during shopping trips once the UK’s Deposit Return Scheme launches, new research finds.

The new research, produced by Danone, the parent company of evian, Volvic and Harrogate Spring Water, found the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) could deliver commercial gains for retailers alongside environmental benefits.

55% of people surveyed said they would be likely to spend a deposit refund voucher in-store during the same visit, while 61% feel more positively about retailers offering recycling facilities.

Consumer appetite for the scheme is also high, with 64% saying they would be likely to use return points regularly once they are introduced.

A flat rate 20p deposit will apply to all drink containers in scope of the UK’s DRS when it launches in October next year.

The schemes in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland cover PET plastic, steel, and aluminium drinks containers, but exclude glass.

However, the Welsh Government will include glass as an in-scope material in its DRS at launch, but no deposit will be charged on any glass containers.

The survey found people disagreed with this approach, with 65% saying that a consistent UK-wide approach would help people recycle more.

Commenting on the research, Dan Vass, Head of Category and Commercial Strategy, Danone North Europe, said: “The findings suggest consumers are ready to make recycling part of their everyday shopping routine.”

“For retailers, that creates an opportunity not only to support higher recycling rates, but also to drive shopper engagement, store visits and in-store spend.

“As the UK prepares for launch, retailers and producers have an opportunity to work together to ensure the scheme is as simple and intuitive as possible from day one.”

This summer, Danone partnered with the All England Lawn Tennis Club and Exchange for Change to pilot Reverse Vending Machines at this year’s Wimbledon qualifying competition, allowing spectators to experience how the UK DRS will work in practice.

The post 68% of people will return drinks containers during shopping trips, new research finds appeared first on Circular Online.

Theresa Mörsen, Policy Manager at Zero Waste Europe, argues that the EU’s Circular Economy Act must break free from import dependencies and cut down on material use if it wants to spearhead a successful circular transition.

Discussions on the circular economy are heating up in Brussels as the European Commission prepares to publish its proposal for the Circular Economy Act in autumn.

But EU decision-makers risk repeating past mistakes by presenting recycling as a silver bullet to meet material needs and tackle the waste crisis.

Instead, Europe needs more serious strides towards decreasing its import dependency and ensuring resources are used more strategically.

Why the current approach isn’t enough

The EU imports almost twice as much material by weight as it sends out, and every day, each EU citizen is responsible for 38.6 kg of raw materials extracted from the earth, on average.

To put that into perspective, making the smartphone in your pocket requires mining 10-15kg of ore. The ecological damage is immense: biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change.

In fact, our current thirst for raw materials makes a comfortable life within planetary boundaries less and less likely for our children and grandchildren.

Much of our material needs come from a persistent throw-away culture. Each year, the EU discards millions of single-use vapes, 16 billion single-use coffee cups, and 5.8 million tonnes of clothing.

These products contain valuable materials from cotton, polyester, and paper, to aluminium, lithium, and cobalt.

While they can be recycled in theory, in practice, collection is insufficient, losses occurring during recycling are inevitable, and many products contain hazardous substances or weren’t designed to be recycled in the first place.

This means that these materials are either burned in an incinerator or buried in a landfill. This is exactly the kind of preventable waste the Circular Economy Act has a chance to address, but only if it goes further than what is currently on the table.

A Circular Economy Act for a secure and innovative Europe

The EU already has an ambitious target to double circularity from 12.2% to 24% by 2030 – set in the Clean Industrial Deal in 2025. But hitting that 24% target requires confronting two issues that remain largely absent from the debate:

1. Circularity is still not prioritised as a driver of competitiveness and resilience, but rather as a burden for businesses.
2. The absolute consumption of materials needed for the EU economy is too high to be substituted with circular materials alone.

This is the core gap the upcoming Act has to close: it must address both circularity and the absolute demand for materials while creating new opportunities for businesses.

Reusing and recycling materials is important, but reuse without absolute reduction is like trying to empty a bathtub without turning off the tap; the water level keeps rising, as do the risks for people and planet.

In an increasingly volatile world that frequently sees the disruption of supply chains, using the materials that are already available to us more strategically is what should guide policy-making.

As the European Commission finalises the proposal, we’re calling for the Circular Economy Act to incorporate the following measures:

• Increasing circularity by prioritising reuse, repair, and refurbishment over recycling to harness the full potential of keeping products in use for as long as possible. Reuse and preparation-for-reuse targets, as well as economic incentives like EPR, can make second-hand products more attractive.
• Managing demand by swapping single-use items for reusable ones, especially by phasing out short-lived electronic appliances.
• Introducing measures to tackle the overall material consumption by putting a fair price on the environmental externalities of new materials entering the EU, taking inspiration from existing EU carbon pricing mechanisms (ETS/CBAM).
• Setting a science-based material footprint target to guide the long-term transition towards a resilient economy and a sustainable level of material use in the EU. In 2024, all Member States called on the Commission to assess such a target. Following the approach taken in the European Climate Law, ambitious and binding targets on primary material use should be supported by concrete policy measures.

The economic advantage of the circular transition

This is not only about saving resources and limiting environmental impacts. The strategic use of materials also paves the way towards a new economy, creating local, circular jobs in reuse, repair, and refurbishment businesses.

Around 4.3 million Europeans already work in the circular sector – that’s more than the entire workforce in Denmark. With the right regulatory support from the Circular Economy Act, it could become the economic engine that powers the transition to a more resilient, competitive, and resourceful European economy.

The post New EU circular economy law risks turning a blind eye to material consumption appeared first on Circular Online.

The world got its first taste of AI with the arrival of ChatGPT in 2021, and everyone became AI users. It was definitely a great time when anyone could use language models and simple chatbots to create poems and stories. Within less than a decade of the introduction of language models, the AI agents manager career path has emerged as the top choice of professionals looking for AI jobs. Do you think it is a good move to become a manager of AI agents in 2026?

• 33% of companies are in the pilot stages or have a fully operational use case of AI agents (Source).    
• The World Economic Forum has stated that 40% of employers will reduce their workforce in areas where AI agents ensure task automation (Source). 
• By 2030, around 45% of organizations will be using AI agents at scale across various business functions (Source). 

As the adoption of AI agents continues to grow, businesses will have to treat them as digital workers. The AI agent manager is responsible for managing the fleet of AI agents of a business and orchestrates the digital workforce. It is not only a lucrative career option for AI professionals but also offers the opportunity to shape the future of artificial intelligence. You must understand the career path of an AI agent manager to step up your preparations for one of the hottest AI jobs now. 

Why is the Demand for AI Agents Manager Growing?

If you think of the AI job market a few years ago, the only big job that comes to mind is that of a prompt engineer. You may have come across many articles and discussions where prompt engineering was painted as the $300k AI job of the future. In the last few years, the AI landscape has been through some significant changes with AI agents being one of the prominent ones. 

The rise in number of postings for AI agent manager jobs serves proof of the growing use of AI agents. It also indicates that AI has shifted from generative AI towards agentic AI or from generating words to digital workers. AI agents don’t wait for your prompts at every step of their workflows and work autonomously to achieve specific goals.

AI agents can use tools, browse the web, gain access to databases, and collaborate with other agents to achieve their objectives. At the same time, it is important to know that autonomy without supervision can ultimately spiral into chaos. AI agent managers ensure that agents stay on track and work as intended without violating any privacy policies or regulations.

Get Certified AI Agents Manager (CAIAM) Certified — Gain in-demand skills to manage agentic AI workflows across the full AI agent lifecycle and lead the future of intelligent automation

What Does an AI Agents Manager Do?

The first thing that you must know before pursuing AI agent manager listings on job boards is the job responsibilities. You can prepare for a specific job role with more efficiency when you know what you are preparing for. AI agent managers are responsible for aligning the working of AI agents with business goals. The answers to “What is the role of an AI agent manager?” focus a lot on the fact that it sits at the intersection of AI technology and corporate strategy.

As an AI agent manager, you will have to,

• Monitor the quality, speed, and behavior of AI agents to monitor their performance while keeping an eye on escalation rates.
• Decide when the AI agents will act alone or work in collaboration with humans or handoff the task completely to humans.
• Make adjustments in how AI agents handle different tasks, primarily by refining prompts and optimizing workflows on the basis of feedback.
• Find out why an AI agent failed with root-cause analysis and resolve the underlying issue. 
• Calculate the business value delivered by AI agents in numbers to draw a quantitative impression of their performance and value.

You can see clearly that the AI agent manager role is significantly different from traditional product managers in many ways. Traditional product management thrives when you can predict how features will behave, and you can define product requirements precisely. AI agents work on a completely different level, and with the level of autonomy they have, you will need a special set of skills to manage them.

Enroll now in the Mastering Generative AI with LLMs Course to discover the different ways of using generative AI models to solve real-world problems.

Which Skills Do You Need to Become an AI Agent Manager?

The job description of an AI agent manager may have led you to think about skills required for the job. Many of you may have also assumed that you need the skills of experienced IT administrators and data scientists for the role. On the contrary, you can choose any AI agent manager course from a credible platform and acquire the relevant skills. If you want to become one of the most successful AI agent managers, then you should invest efforts in learning specific skills.

• Context Engineering

AI agent managers design context systems that help AI agents in understanding situations and retaining memory across different interactions. As a result, AI agents can adapt their behavior according to the context rather than working as mindless bots. You must know how to craft information architectures that not only store data but also facilitate intelligent decision-making.  

• Advanced Prompt Engineering

You will have to move beyond the basic prompt engineering techniques to become AI agent managers. As an AI agent manager, you will be expected to know about systematic optimization techniques and automated improvement processes. Professionals aspiring to become AI agent managers must know how prompt architecture works and the best practices for systematic performance improvement. 

• Agentic Orchestration

The primary work of AI agents manager revolves around orchestrating networks of AI agents. You must know how to design workflows in which multiple agents can work in collaboration, transfer tasks, and manage conflicts without consistent human involvement. AI agent managers should not only understand the technical capabilities of AI agents but also the behaviors resulting from agent interactions.

• Systems Thinking 

The agent manager has to work with numerous AI agents and ensure that all of them work as intended. Therefore, the AI agent manager must have the capability to visualize the interactions between different agents. You must try to understand how the output of one agent serves as the input of another and how they handoff tasks. Small changes in how an agent handles exceptions will have significant impact on what another agent does with the data they receive. AI agent managers should know how to approach agentic AI as a broader system rather than focusing on individual agent functionalities.

• Business Acumen

You cannot think about becoming an effective AI agent manager with technical skills alone. What use are your skills as an AI agent manager when you don’t know the right context to apply them? The best AI agent managers are the ones who know and understand the business processes that should be automated. Understanding the business side of agentic AI is as important as the technical aspects, especially when you have to become an invaluable asset for employers.

• Soft Skills

The most crucial skill requirement for AI agent manager jobs will obviously draw attention towards soft skills. What are the must-have soft skills for someone who has to manage AI agents? Even while working with AI agents, you must have the ability for critical thinking and clear communication. On top of it, you should also be adaptable to change and prepare for constant iteration without waiting for the perfect conditions.

Discover the AI for Everyone Course and learn AI, Generative AI, ChatGPT, AI ethics, and real-world business applications.

Final Thoughts 

The biggest career option in AI right now is that of an AI agent manager, a role which has come under the limelight with growing use of agentic AI. You can prepare for AI agent manager roles without advanced technical expertise or data science skills. On the contrary, you can think of AI agent manager as a revised product manager role in the AI space. As an AI agent manager, you can play a major role in leading the digital workforce in future. With the right training courses and certification programs, you can acquire the relevant skills and become successful AI agent managers. Learn more about agentic AI and discover why it is the future of artificial intelligence. 

The post The Rise of AI Agents Managers in the Enterprise Era appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

About Sherri Prettyman

Full Name: Sherri Prettyman

Designation: Director of Professional and Marketplace Engagement

Company: Amgen

Country: United States

Sherri’s Learning Journey That Inspires

Which certification program did you complete on the 101 Blockchains platform?

I have completed the Certified Enterprise Blockchain Professional (CEBP) certification program with the 101 Blockchains platform. 

What exactly made you pick 101 Blockchains and how would you describe your learning experience?

The first thing that made me choose 101 Blockchains is the design of their learning materials. I found them easy to understand, and the way they maintain continuity across all chapters helps you remember key points with minimal efforts. I had a really enjoyable learning experience with the 101 Blockchains platform.

At 101 Blockchains, you don’t just earn certifications — you gain real-world skills that shape you into a confident blockchain professional.

Which skill do you think has helped you the most?

The 101 Blockchains platform helped me learn the skill to explain blockchain technology to anyone, including people without any technical knowledge. I can now help others understand blockchain, an ability that has helped me the most. On top of it, I have also learned about permissioned blockchains and figured out why they are important to businesses that demand more privacy.

How has the 101 Blockchains platform supported your professional growth?

Once I had completed the certification course on 101 Blockchains platform, I had a clear and in-depth understanding of how organizations can use blockchain applications. Most important of all, the course also helped me understand the essential steps required to translate blockchain ideals into real and actionable solutions.

From learners to leaders — explore the success stories of 100,000+ professionals with 101 Blockchains.

What is your advice for people who want a career in blockchain?

You must start your learning journey with 101 Blockchains, as it will help you learn how to implement your skills and ideas in action.

Why would you recommend 101 Blockchains to other learners?

The 101 Blockchains platform offers helpful analogies in their courses, and it is easier to understand the material without prior coding experience. Most important of all, the objective of every learning resource on the platform is to help you learn about the real business applications of blockchain. 

The post Success Story: Sherri Prettyman’s Learning Journey with 101 Blockchains appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

The global financial landscape is going through a major paradigm shift with digital assets taking the front seat. Digital assets include a wide range of assets, such as cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), and decentralized finance (DeFi) instruments. The curiosity to learn the best practices for digital asset management is growing as digital assets evolve into a trusted group of institutional assets. You must know that managing a digital asset portfolio is fundamentally different from managing traditional equities.

• The global digital assets market is expected to bring revenue of $112.1 billion in 2026. (Source)
• More than 75% of retail investors are willing to invest in tokenized assets through the bank or trading platforms they are already using. (Source)

The digital assets market is always operational, leverages unique custody infrastructure and different technologies, and the regulatory frameworks keep changing frequently. Asset managers and high-end investors have to build a resilient digital asset portfolio and maintain a balance between risk mitigation and cutting-edge technologies. Learning about the ideal approaches to manage your digital asset portfolio can help you gain a competitive edge.   

Elevate your expertise in digital finance—earn the Certified Digital Asset Compliance Expert (CDACE) and stand out in crypto compliance, auditing, and governance.

Unraveling the Best Practices for Digital Asset Management in 2026

The popularity of digital assets has gained momentum in the last few years, and they are no longer speculative assets. You can find digital assets that have their value tied to real-world assets, bridging the gap between the physical and digital domains of finance. However, creating a digital asset portfolio also requires understanding how you can approach digital asset management and the differences with traditional portfolio management.

1. Rely on Institutional-Grade Custody

Custody is an administrative responsibility in traditional finance and is more of an afterthought for the customer. In the case of digital assets, custody is the foundation for security and ownership. If you lose the private keys underlying your digital assets, then you will lose the assets permanently. Therefore, it is important to develop custody architecture with multiple tiers for your different assets.

• Multi-Signature or Multi-Party Computation 

Any digital asset investor using a single private key is introducing a prominent single point of failure. Modern approaches to managing digital assets rely on either multi-signature or multi-party computation architectures. 

Multi-sig transactions need multiple independent cryptographic signatures for authorization. While multi-sig transactions are highly secure, they can be rigid and restricted to specific blockchains.

Multi-party computation works by breaking one private key into multiple ‘shards’ distributed across different nodes. In multi-party computation transactions, it is easier to sign transactions without combining the full key in one location. 

• Tiered Storage for Digital Assets

The most common best practice for managing digital assets is the choice of different storage methods for different digital assets. How can a digital asset manager identify the right storage for a specific digital asset class? You can find the answer in the need for liquidity, as different storage techniques come with specific lock-in periods.

Investors should choose cold storage for long-term holdings as it remains completely isolated from the internet and offers better security.

Warm storage is the ideal option for digital assets that you want to use in weekly transactions or rebalancing trades. Even though warm storage holds keys online, it also needs multi-factor authentication and consensus rules for trade execution.

Hot storage is the perfect choice for digital assets used in active or immediate trading. You can rely on hot storage for your digital assets if you want the assurance of immediate liquidity. Experts suggest that investors should keep nominal share of their digital assets portfolio in hot wallets to reduce risk exposure.

Build your identity as a certified blockchain expert with 101 Blockchains’ Blockchain Certifications designed to provide enhanced career prospects.

2. Advanced Risk Management and Portfolio Diversification

The notorious levels of volatility in digital asset markets present a formidable risk for every investor. As a digital asset investor, you may experience troubles due to faster drawdowns and higher asset correlation during market disruption. If you trust the diversification strategies applied to traditional equity markets for your digital asset portfolio, then you are increasing the risk.

• Separate Assets into Different Functional Categories

The ideal approach to diversifying your digital asset portfolio requires separating your assets into unique functional categories. It is important to understand that digital assets don’t fall in one monolithic group and belong to different layers. The safest digital assets portfolio looks like one in which you can find assets spread across the different layers.

The layer-1 foundation assets like Ethereum and Bitcoin are primary market liquidity anchors and serve as big stores of value. Moving one layer up, you will find layer-2 and infrastructure tokens that offer growth-oriented exposure, especially to scalability solutions and decentralized data networks.

The next prominent layer in your digital asset portfolio management belongs to tokenized real-world assets. You will find tokenized gold, treasury bills and real estate in this layer of digital assets, primarily used for yield farming and benefits of low volatility.

Your digital asset portfolio will be incomplete without DeFi and protocol tokens that are gradually revolutionizing finance. These digital assets will play a major role in driving cash flow to your digital asset portfolio.

• Addressing Smart Contract and Protocol Risks

One of the distinctive highlights of digital assets that make them different from traditional equities points at the technology risk. You can think of the example of a decentralized lending protocol where an investor holds a large portion of their digital assets. It is important to acknowledge the fact that the decentralized lending protocol may be vulnerable to smart contract bugs, oracle failures, and economic exploits.

Digital asset portfolio managers have to implement comprehensive technical due diligence and evaluate third-party code audits to check smart contract integrity. In addition, investors should also check the historical performance of the protocol under economic stress tests and the reputation of the developers before investing large capital.

Excited to learn about the critical vulnerabilities and security risks in smart contract development, Enroll now in the Smart Contracts Security Course

3. Preparing a Robust Operational Infrastructure 

Many digital asset investors rely on different retail applications to manage their institutional digital asset portfolio. The problem with these applications points at the extreme tracking inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities that put digital assets at risk. You will need a combined institutional tech stack to maximize the performance of your digital asset portfolio.

New platforms for Order Management Systems and Execution Management Systems help managers in routing orders through multiple liquidity venues. As a result, they can ensure the best execution and prevent larger market orders from price changes. 

Effective use of portfolio management systems that can combine real-time pricing data and track cost basis and historic performance also boosts digital asset management efforts. Portfolio management tools can also monitor existing risk metrics across different storage medium and protocols in one dashboard.

Most important of all, seamless integration of blockchain analytics with your digital asset portfolio can also make portfolio management more transparent. You can leverage on-chain data analytics tools like Chainalysis to ensure that incoming transactions don’t come from illicit wallet addresses. As a result, you can protect the regulatory cleanliness of the on-chain footprint of your digital asset portfolio.   

Final Thoughts 

The insights on best practices for digital asset management showcase that building an effective digital asset portfolio is not enough for success. You have to change the way you think about investing in digital assets as it is completely different from investing in traditional equities. Investors must start with choosing secure custody options for their digital assets, depending on their liquidity needs. Subsequently, it is important for every digital asset investor to diversify their portfolio by distributing their holdings across different assets. Learn more about the digital asset landscape and discover the best practices to safeguard your digital asset portfolios from systemic risks now.

*Disclaimer: The article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide any investment advice. Claims made in this article do not constitute investment advice and should not be taken as such. 101 Blockchains shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this article. Do your own research!

The post Best Practices for Managing Digital Asset Portfolios appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

About Nyphen Sanders

Full Name: Nyphen Sanders

Designation: Information Security Engineer

Company: Kalpan

Country: United States

Nyphen‘s Learning Journey That Inspires

Can you tell us the names of the Certifications and Courses by 101 Blockchains that you have completed recently?

I have earned the Certified Web3 Professional (CW3P) credential from 101 Blockchains along with completing the “Blockchain Scalability and Interoperability Mastery” professional training course. I have also achieved the certificate of completion for their “Blockchain Fundamentals” course.

Why did you choose the 101 Blockchains platform, and how was your overall learning experience with them?

The first reason to choose the 101 Blockchains platform revolved around learning more about blockchain outside the scope of cryptocurrencies, with special focus on blockchain security and real enterprise use cases. I am working as an information security engineer in the web2 domain, and I believe that web3 is the future. 

The curiosity to prepare for the evolution of technology increased as I learned more about cryptocurrencies and developed the interest to learn about the working of blockchain technology and its applications. One of the notable highlights about 101 Blockchains that I appreciated is the way they focus on the utility of blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies. The platform also showed me how blockchain works in healthcare, supply chain management, finance, education, cybersecurity, and identity management. 

With the learning resources by 101 Blockchains, I had a great overall learning experience. The platform provided comprehensive training through real-world examples to make difficult ideas look a lot simpler.  

At 101 Blockchains, you don’t just earn certifications — you gain real-world skills that shape you into a confident blockchain professional.

Which skills or knowledge gained from the 101 Blockchains platform helped you most?

The foremost thing that I learned with 101 Blockchains that helped me the most was the fact that blockchain is not all about cryptocurrencies. I found practical lessons on fundamental blockchain concepts and the working of distributed ledger technology. On top of it, I also discovered simpler explanations of how nonce values, blocks, and hashes work together for blockchain security. Most important of all, the platform kept pushing me forward to learn more about blockchain and expand my knowledge. 

I also gained in-depth understanding of different types of blockchains, blockchain interoperability, and how bridges ensure communication between blockchains. All of these topics helped in answering many questions that I had in mind when I started my learning journey. I am still expanding my knowledge through continuous learning with the help of resources from 101 Blockchains.

How did the 101 Blockchains platform contribute to your professional growth?

My professional growth started with the help of 101 Blockchains platform that offered me the best introduction to web3 technologies. I earned their Certified Web3 Professional (CW3P) credential, and now it stands out on my LinkedIn profile as a proof of my commitment to grow as a web3 expert. 

The platform also fuelled my professional growth by offering hands-on explanations of blockchain applications in the real world. With the support of the 101 Blockchains platform, I could stay ahead while preparing for the next generation of the internet or web3. It not only helped me acquire relevant skills and knowledge but also showed me how to achieve competitive advantage in new job markets.

From learners to leaders — explore the success stories of 100,000+ professionals with 101 Blockchains.

Do you have something to say to someone considering a career in blockchain?

If you want a career in blockchain, then you should build a strong fundamental understanding of blockchain concepts. I would recommend choosing the membership of 101 Blockchains and gaining unlimited access to all their professional courses. Their courses are not only comprehensive but also easy to understand, thereby making it easier for beginners to learn blockchain.

The structured learning paths offered by the platform help you with a targeted approach to skill development in the domain of blockchain and web3. I have trusted the learning resources by the 101 Blockchains platform to boost my professional growth, and it continues helping me expand my blockchain and web3 expertise. Anyone can choose 101 Blockchains to begin their career in blockchain or take the next step in their career path.   

The post Success Story: Nyphen Sanders’ Learning Journey with 101 Blockchains appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

Artificial intelligence and web3 coming together in a major paradigm shift sounds like something from a futuristic vision or concept. The early phases of the blockchain landscape were all about decentralized finance and digital ownership. However, the introduction of AI agents in web3 will add a programmable and self-sovereign intelligence layer to the blockchain ecosystem. Many people have started raising questions about the value that agentic AI can bring in the blockchain and web3 space.

• AI agents have the potential to generate economic value of almost $2.9 trillion by 2030 in the United States. (Source)   
• A survey by LangChain in 2024 found that around 51% of professionals used AI agents in production with 78% actively planning to implement them soon. (Source)

Agentic AI can bring immense value to the table, and professionals have been acknowledging its potential for few years now. AI agents offer more than generic automation and transform LLMs into smart autonomous entities that can perceive the environment, implement reasoning, and execute actions to achieve their goals. Learning how AI agents can complement blockchain and web3 technologies will help you understand the foundations of autonomous web3 and blockchain systems. 

Understanding the Definition of AI Agents in Web3 Contexts 

The best way to understand how AI agents can influence web3 involves discovering how they are different from traditional bots. Traditional web bots rely on rigid and hardcoded logic, which means that they execute predefined actions when specific conditions are met. 

On the contrary, AI agents have the capability to build autonomous blockchain systems as agents use large language models and machine learning frameworks. With these technologies, agentic systems have the capabilities for reasoning, planning, and adapting to diverse environments.

If you bring AI agents into the domain of blockchain networks, the agents will take on some of the native properties of web3.

• AI agents can become self-sovereign entities capable of owning private keys and crypto assets and managing their balance sheets without human intervention.
• The use of agentic AI in web3 will empower agents to interact with decentralized applications and smart contracts without depending on centralized intermediaries.
• The actions, financial transactions, and logic parameters of AI agents can be documented transparently on immutable decentralized ledgers.

You can notice that web3 complements the limitations of AI agents by providing a native on-chain identity through public keys. AI agents also leverage web3 to gain access to a financial rail in the form of cryptocurrency for autonomous global transactions.

Get Certified AI Agents Manager (CAIAM) Certified — Gain in-demand skills to manage agentic AI workflows across the full AI agent lifecycle and lead the future of intelligent automation

Unraveling the Synergy between AI Agents and Web3

The relationship between AI agents and web3 is purely symbiotic with both of them filling up the limitations of the other. AI agents bring cognitive capabilities while blockchain and web3 offer secure economic rails and sandbox environments.

• Contributions of Web3 to AI Agents

The potential of AI agents is extremely limited in the web 2.0 landscape. You cannot have AI agents opening a bank account or signing legal contracts without human intervention in web 2.0. Web3 can solve this problem by providing identities to AI agents and empowering them to pay for its compute resources. AI agents in the domain of web3 can also charge users for their services and raise capital to invest in decentralized ecosystems.

• Contributions of AI Agents in Web3

The utility of AI agents in blockchain revolves around making web3 accessible to everyone. You may have noticed how web3 environments can be extremely complex and difficult to navigate for everyday users. The example of DeFi can help you understand how AI agents can revolutionize the web3 experience for users. DeFi users have to monitor gas fees, yield farms, slippage, and liquidity pools across multiple chains, which introduces complexities. AI agents can remove this complexity by translating goals specified by DeFi users into multistep workflows.

Identifying the Core Use Cases of AI Agents in Web3 

You can gauge the impact of AI agents on the process of building purely autonomous web3 and blockchain systems through use cases of agentic AI. The combination of AI agents and web3 will lead to significant disruption across decentralized finance, digital culture, and governance. 

1. Autonomous DeFi 

Conventional algorithmic trading bots leverage historical data and predefined mathematical parameters to execute trades. On the contrary, AI agents can conduct real-time sentiment analysis on social media data and read governance proposals of DeFi protocols. Agentic systems are also capable of monitoring on-chain liquidity changes and facilitating dynamic adjustment of portfolios. 

AI agents can also serve as powerful tools for managing your yield farming portfolio across different protocols. You will also notice applications of AI agents in DeFi helping with automatic fund transfers to maximize returns. Most important of all, AI agents are always operational and can make complex trading decisions faster than human traders.

2. On-Chain AI Influencers

The demand to build web3 AI agents that can serve as influencers is also gaining traction. Autonomous AI agents can generate content and interact with users on social media with some of them also showcasing capabilities for managing their individual tokenized communities.

The development and growth of these types of agents will set new precedents for identity of creators and community building approaches. Agentic AI has the potential to create completely new avenues for intellectual property management and decentralized entertainment. 

3. Decentralized Governance with AI

Artificial intelligence agents also stand out as prominent candidates for transforming decentralized governance with diverse benefits. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs experience issues like non-participation of voters and slow decision-making processes. Agentic AI offers the most promising solutions for optimizing the structure of DAOs and changing how they operate. 

AI agents can read through complex governance proposals and evaluate their impact on the DAO treasury. Subsequently, agents can vote on behalf of token holders or design optimized counter-proposals. AI agents in advanced setups can serve as autonomous treasury managers that deploy capital according to the mandates approved by the community.

Enroll now in the Mastering Generative AI with LLMs Course to discover the different ways of using generative AI models to solve real-world problems.

Challenges Expected in the Use of AI Agents in Web3

The benefits expected from AI agents in the domain of web3 clearly showcase that autonomous web3 systems driven by agentic AI have huge potential. However, it is important to address many critical hurdles to ensure widespread adoption of agentic AI in web3.

1. Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

Do you know the link that connects AI agents with the world of web3? Smart contracts play a major role in bridging the gap between agentic AI systems and web3. Let us assume that the code of an agent or the smart contract that it interacts with has some vulnerability. It clearly implies that smart contract vulnerabilities can lead to huge losses, especially due to instant draining of assets. Without appropriate guardrails, AI agents can execute thousands of faulty transactions before they notice anything wrong.

2. Costs of On-chain Inference

The thought of using AI agents in web3 definitely sounds appealing with the assurance of numerous benefits. It is also important to know that running complex LLMs directly on blockchains is practically impossible due to high gas fees and scalability issues. AI agents have to do most of their cognitive processing outside the chain, primarily through decentralized compute networks and push the results to the blockchain. Therefore, bridging the gap between AI agents and web3 without introducing centralization or latency is still a huge challenge.

Final Thoughts 

The combination of AI agents and the web3 space stand for a fundamental evolution in how we perceive both technologies. Blockchain networks can empower AI agents with identity and economic tools to function as self-sovereign entities. On the other hand, AI agents can help in creating autonomous blockchain systems with a cognitive layer that performs complex interactions without human intervention. The future of autonomous web3 and blockchain systems is already here with AI agents, and you need to prepare for it now.

The post AI Agents in Web3: The Future of Autonomous Blockchain Systems appeared first on 101 Blockchains.

Emma Hardy MP has been confirmed as the new Minister for the Circular Economy and Waste Crime.

Hardy, the MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice, was elected to Parliament in 2017 and served as the Minister for Water and Flooding in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) between 2024 and 2026.

She remained as a Junior Minister in Defra throughout both Steve Reed’s and Emma Reynolds’ time as Environment Secretary; however, she has now been promoted to Minister of State in the department.

Earlier this month, Dame Angela Eagle replaced Reynolds as Environment Secretary as part of Andy Burnham’s first Cabinet as Prime Minister.

Previously, the responsibility for waste and the circular economy sat with the Minister for Nature, a position formerly held by Mary Creagh, who announced she was being replaced last week.

The Chartered Institution of Wastes Management’s (CIWM) Director of Policy Comms & External Affairs Dan Cooke said CIWM looks forward to working with Hardy to help accelerate the UK’s transition to a more resource-efficient future.

“Having a Minister of State with a clear focus on waste crime within Defra’s circular economy agenda is a welcome step and a clear signal,” Cooke said.

“We now hope to see the imminent release of the much-anticipated Circular Economy Growth Plan, which should set out the strategic direction for our vital sector for the years ahead.”

The UK government has said it intends to publish its delayed Circular Economy Growth Plan ‘soon’, but has not given a firm publication date.

The Plan was originally expected to be published in October last year but has been delayed.

Cooke continued: “CIWM will continue to support the UK Government in progressing the circular economy agenda to drive greater resource efficiency, and to deliver the economic growth, investment, and job opportunities our sector can offer.”

“We will also continue to support government, the Environment Agency, regulators and partners in tackling serious and organised waste crime, targeting the criminals profiting from illegal activity, undermining our sector, causing misery and anxiety in communities, and damaging local economies and environments.”

“There is still much work to do, and CIWM and its members continue to drive towards higher professional standards in the resources and waste sector.”

Defra announces new Director of Circular Economy

Defra also announced that Becky Shrubsole commenced her role as Director of Circular Economy this month.

Shrubsole has worked across government and previously held senior roles in Defra and, before that, the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG).

Defra said her cross-government background, which covers both environmental policy and communities and local government, makes her ‘exceptionally well placed’ to drive forward the circular economy agenda.

“We very much look forward to the leadership and fresh perspectives she will bring to this important area of work, and we hope you will join us in welcoming her to the role,” Defra said in a statement.

The post Emma Hardy confirmed as Minister for Circular Economy & Waste Crime appeared first on Circular Online.