"New Infrastructure" refers to those underlying technological elements and architectures that possess innovative driving forces, such as cryptography, tokens, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. These technologies constitute the core pillars of Web3 development. The development history of Web3 is essentially the process of these new infrastructures constantly iterating, integrating, and driving innovation and transformation.
This article will categorize the current development of Web3 into three stages from the perspective of "core elements," revealing how the core elements of each stage act as driving forces and how their innovation, iteration, and integration drive the evolution of Web3.
I. Initial Stage: BTC + Blockchain
The emergence of the Bitcoin blockchain has laid the basic structural paradigm for the development of the Web3 industry, as shown in Figure 2-1.
Figure 1-1: Structure Paradigm of Bitcoin Blockchain
Figure 1-1 shows the three-layer structure of the Bitcoin blockchain system, from which we can extract two core elements:
Cryptocurrency ($BTC): As a vehicle of value, it provides the underlying foundation for value exchange in Web3.
Distributed Ledger (Blockchain): As a decentralized trust mechanism and innovative data structure, it enables the construction of various decentralized applications.
From subsequent developments, we gradually realize that the structural paradigm and basic elements of the Bitcoin blockchain have had a profound impact on fields such as currency and finance, value exchange and social cooperation, and the development of the internet, specifically reflected in several aspects:
It has given rise to a global digital currency: Bitcoin pioneered permissionless global currency circulation, bringing new possibilities to cross-border payments and financial inclusion.
It has built a decentralized trust mechanism: The public transparency and immutability of distributed ledgers have constructed a decentralized trust mechanism, promoting efficient value exchange and collaboration globally.
It has opened the Web3 era: The success of blockchain has validated the feasibility of blockchain technology, laying the foundation for the development of the Web3 value internet.
Bitcoin, as the pioneer of blockchain technology, brought revolutionary changes and paved the way for the arrival of the Web3 era. However, Bitcoin's scalability is limited, making it difficult to support complex applications such as smart contracts. In this context, Ethereum's innovation has propelled the industry into the next stage of development.
II. Development Stages: Blockchain + Smart Contract + Token
Ethereum introduces Turing-complete smart contracts based on Bitcoin, making the blockchain not just a digital currency system but a programmable blockchain platform. The structural paradigm of the Ethereum blockchain is shown in Figure 3-1.
Figure 2-1: Structural Paradigm of Ethereum Blockchain
Smart contracts, tokens, and distributed ledgers play important roles in the structural paradigm of Ethereum:
Distributed Ledger (Blockchain): Ensures data security and transparency. It has built a diverse public chain ecosystem. The public chain is the cornerstone of ecosystem development, and its prosperity directly affects the overall development of Web3.
Smart Contracts: Smart contracts provide programmability to the blockchain, promoting the vigorous development of DeFi. According to @0xmiddle's analysis, DeFi 1.0 laid the foundation, DeFi 2.0 improved capital efficiency, DeFi 3.0 emphasized composability, while DeFi 4.0 focuses on AI intelligence.
Token: Tokens, as vehicles of value and incentive mechanisms, provide effective means for value capture for protocols, innovate value distribution methods, give rise to innovative models such as ICO and DeFi, and accelerate industry development.
In summary, distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and tokens complement each other, together constituting the infrastructure of the Web3 world at this stage. Ethereum's innovation organically combines these three, generating powerful synergies that drive the prosperity of the ecosystem and continually push the total market value to new heights, marking a new developmental stage for the Web3 industry.
However, after experiencing an initial phase of rapid development, the Web3 industry faces numerous challenges, such as declining enthusiasm for VC projects, unmet expectations for the Bitcoin ecosystem, and Ethereum trapped in FUD dilemmas, adding uncertainty to the market.
Currently, the industry has reached a critical turning point, requiring new forces to break through bottlenecks and bring innovation and transformation.
III. The Driving Force Behind AI Memecoins - AI Agents
We are currently in the "Super Memecoin Cycle," with tens of thousands of memecoins emerging. Memecoins, as a type of cryptocurrency originating from internet culture, have stirred up waves in the cryptocurrency market with their strong community effects and viral dissemination abilities. However, each wave has different core driving factors, as shown in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1: Different Development Stages of Memecoins and Core Driving Forces
The development history of Memecoins is akin to a microcosm of the cryptocurrency market, with Memecoins always keeping pace with the times. The first five stages of Memecoins saw core dynamics primarily originating from within the crypto community, tightly linked with Web3 infrastructures such as blockchain, smart contracts, and tokens. However, the arrival of the sixth stage marks a new developmental phase for Memecoins. As an external force, AI Agents have successfully broken barriers, injecting new vitality into Memecoins and becoming their new engine.
The addition of AI Agents has brought a qualitative leap to Memecoin:
Narrative Upgrade: AI Agents elevate Memecoin from a simple "meme" to a digital asset with deep cultural connotations by generating personalized and high-frequency content. For example, the AI-generated religious content of $GOAT not only attracts a large number of users but also builds a unique community culture.
Value Support: AI Agents can monitor market dynamics in real-time and conduct data analysis, providing more precise market strategies for Memecoin. For instance, AI for $LUNA can automatically adjust its token buyback plan based on market conditions, thus stabilizing the token price.
Community Building: AI Agents can interact with community members in a personalized manner, enhancing user engagement. For example, through natural language processing technology, AI Agents can understand user emotions and provide corresponding responses, strengthening community cohesion.
The addition of AI Agents, with their autonomy, creativity, and social abilities, has propelled Memecoin to a new level, bringing unprecedented development opportunities. However, the potential of AI Agents extends far beyond Memecoin; they are becoming the new infrastructure of Web3, bringing new transformations to the entire Web3 ecosystem while continuously driving industry innovation and development.
IV. Acceleration Phase: AI Agents Become the New Infrastructure of Web3
AI Agents, as intelligent entities capable of autonomous learning, decision-making, and task execution, are gradually becoming the new infrastructure of the Web3 world. Their unique position in Web3 stems from their outstanding performance in economic independence, deep integration with smart contracts, and driving Web3 innovation.
1. Economically Independent Intelligent Individuals
In the traditional internet, AI Agents were limited in functionality due to the lack of legitimate digital identity and asset ownership. However, in Web3, with the help of technologies such as wallets, decentralized identities (DIDs), and public/private keys, AI Agents can obtain independent digital identities and accounts, allowing them to own and manage assets, as well as execute verification and signing capabilities. This enables AI Agents to become independent economic entities—digital citizens of the Web3 world. This capability allows AI Agents to actively participate in various financial and economic activities within Web3.
2. The Best Partner for Smart Contracts
Smart contracts and AI Agents, two seemingly independent concepts, are deeply integrating under the promotion of blockchain and artificial intelligence, becoming the best partners for each other.
We compare the characteristics of smart contracts and AI Agents, as shown in Table 4-1.
Figure 4-1: Comparison of Characteristics between Smart Contracts and AI Agents
The combination of AI Agents and smart contracts can fully leverage the advantages of both and unleash their potential:
Combining Certainty and Flexibility: Smart contracts provide a reliable execution environment, while AI Agents can make dynamic adjustments based on real-time data and environmental changes, achieving more flexible applications.
Combining Decision-Making Ability and Automated Execution: AI Agents, as intelligent brains, can analyze complex problems and make decisions, then automatically execute the decision results through smart contracts, improving efficiency.
Integration of On-chain and Off-chain Data: Smart contracts mainly handle on-chain data, while AI Agents can utilize both on-chain and off-chain data (such as sensor data, social media, and market data) for more comprehensive analysis and decision-making.
The combination of Decentralization and Intelligence: Smart contracts ensure the decentralization and transparency of the system, while AI Agents bring intelligence to the system, helping to realize the vision of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and applications (DApps).
Through deep integration with smart contracts, AI Agents will play an increasingly important role in Web3, driving innovation and transformation.
V. AI Agents Open a New Era of Intelligence in Web3
AI Agents, as new infrastructure, are leading Web3 into a new intelligent era. This is mainly reflected in the innovative infrastructure and applications of various public chains, covering fields such as AI memecoins, systems and tools, AgentFi, AI Payment, gaming, and entertainment, with more information available online.
Among many public chains, Arweave/AO is highly compatible with the development of AI in terms of architecture and system resources, and the community places a strong emphasis on the development of AI Agents, making the application landing of AI Agents a common goal and action guide, which deserves special attention.
In terms of system architecture: AO adopts the Actor model for design, where the core idea is that each component in the system is an independent agent capable of parallel computation, which highly aligns with the application architecture driven by AI Agents.
In terms of system resources: AI relies on three elements: models, algorithms, and computing power, thus having high resource demands. This coincides with the resource characteristics of AO. The Arweave + AO system built on the SCP paradigm has scalable computing, data, and storage resources, allowing for independent allocation of computing resources for each AI process, effectively eliminating computational performance bottlenecks; it can provide trustworthy data resources for AI models, helping to learn and train to reduce model bias.
In terms of key technologies: With the support of three key technologies—WASM64, WeaveDrive, and Llama.cpp large language model inference engines—AO can directly run various large language models in smart contracts, such as Llama 3 and GPT-2, laying a solid foundation for the development and operation of AI Agent applications.
In terms of foundational protocols: The FusionFi Protocol (FFP) is a protocol specification and development tool designed to connect different agents, build information bridges, and standardize interactions between DApp agents. Through FFP, seamless integration of various financial services such as transactions, loans, and futures can be achieved, constructing a decentralized financial ecosystem across applications and scenarios.
In terms of trusted data: Dria enables AI models to access up-to-date, complete, and verified information, effectively reducing the bias and inaccuracies common in centralized data sources, thus providing high-quality data sources for AI Agent applications.
In asset innovation: The initiator of EverVision, @outprog, innovatively proposed the concept of "AgentFi Notes," aimed at reconstructing decentralized trust between entities through these notes. This concept allows everyone to exercise sovereignty, issue their own notes, and manage assets, integrating various financial scenarios such as exchanges, futures, collateralized loans, and stablecoins.
In application innovation: Permaswap is the leading DEX in the ecosystem, which developed into a super liquidity aggregator after launching the FusionFi Protocol by integrating various financial forms. Botega, as the first autonomous agent-driven DEX in the ecosystem, has built an AMM system with independent processes that can autonomously execute advanced order types such as trailing stop-loss, dollar-cost averaging, and limit orders, intelligently allocating liquidity to enhance trading efficiency.
As conditions mature, Arweave/AO, leveraging its advantages in the permanent storage of data and atomic data assets and ultra-parallel computing, may stimulate the development potential of data-driven intelligent businesses, thereby meeting the demands of real economic activities on/off the chain.
Although the Arweave/AO ecosystem is still in its early stages, the collaborative development of upstream and downstream ecosystems has made it an active builder of the Web3 intelligent era, and its future development prospects are worth looking forward to.
Full Text Summary
The development history of Web3 is a process of continuous innovation and iteration. Core elements such as distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and tokens played key roles in the early and developmental stages of Web3, driving innovation and maturity in fields such as cryptocurrency, public chains, and DeFi.
Today, AI Agents, as a new type of infrastructure for Web3, deeply integrate with other core elements, giving rise to entirely new applications and business models. From AI Memecoin to AgentFi, these innovative cases indicate that AI Agents have become the core driving force behind the intelligent upgrade of the Web3 ecosystem.
With the continuous improvement of public chain ecosystems and ongoing advancements in AI technology, AI Agents will play an increasingly important role in Web3, ushering in a more intelligent, open, and inclusive digital new era.
