AI Agent, as a new type of infrastructure for Web3, deeply integrates with other core elements, which will undoubtedly give rise to entirely new applications and business models.
Written by: "Ping Shuo" Blockchain
"New Infrastructure" refers to the underlying technological elements and architectures that possess innovative driving forces, such as cryptography, tokens, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. These technologies form the core pillars of Web3 development. The development process of Web3 is essentially a continuous iteration, integration, and promotion of innovation and transformation of these new infrastructures.
This article will divide the current development of Web3 into three stages from the perspective of "core elements", revealing how the core elements of each stage drive the evolution of Web3 through their innovation, iteration, and integration.
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 1-1.
Figure 1-1 shows the three-layer structure of the Bitcoin blockchain system, from which we can extract two core elements:
Cryptographic digital currency ($BTC): As a carrier of value, it provides the underlying basis for value exchange in Web3.
Distributed ledger (blockchain): As a decentralized trust mechanism and innovative data structure, it provides the possibility for building various decentralized applications.
From subsequent developments, we gradually recognize 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 collaboration, and the development of the internet, specifically reflected in the following aspects:
Has given rise to a global digital currency: Bitcoin pioneered permissionless global currency circulation, bringing new possibilities for cross-border payments, financial inclusion, and other areas.
Has built a decentralized trust mechanism: The characteristics of distributed ledgers, such as openness, transparency, and immutability, have constructed a decentralized trust mechanism, promoting efficient value exchange and collaboration worldwide.
Has opened the Web3 era: The success of blockchain has validated the feasibility of blockchain technology, providing effective means for value carrying and transmission, laying the foundation for the development of the Web3 value internet.
Bitcoin, as a pioneer of blockchain technology, has 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 Stage: Blockchain + Smart Contract + Token
Ethereum introduced Turing-complete smart contracts on the foundation of Bitcoin, making blockchain not just a digital currency system, but a programmable blockchain platform. The structural paradigm of the Ethereum blockchain is shown in Figure 2-1.
Smart contracts, tokens, and distributed ledgers all play important roles in the structural paradigm of Ethereum:
Distributed ledger (blockchain): Ensures data security and transparency. It has built a diversified public chain ecosystem. The public chain is the cornerstone of ecological development, and its prosperity directly affects the overall development of Web3.
Smart contract: Smart contracts provide programmability for 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: As a value carrier and incentive mechanism, tokens provide effective value capture methods 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 forming the infrastructure of the Web3 world in this stage. Ethereum's innovation organically combines these three, generating strong synergy, promoting ecological prosperity, and causing the total market value of the industry to reach new highs, marking the entry of the Web3 industry into a completely new stage of development.
However, after experiencing a phase of rapid initial development, the Web3 industry also faces numerous challenges, such as declining interest in VC projects, unmet expectations in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and Ethereum being mired in FUD, adding uncertainty to the market.
Currently, the industry is at a critical turning point, needing new forces to break bottlenecks and bring innovation and transformation.
III. The Driving Force Behind AI Memecoin - AI Agent
We are currently in the "super Memecoin cycle," with tens of thousands of memecoins emerging. Memecoin, as a cryptocurrency originating from internet culture, has stirred waves in the cryptocurrency market due to its powerful community effect and viral spread. However, each wave of enthusiasm has different core driving factors, as shown in Figure 3-1.
The development history of Memecoin mirrors the cryptocurrency market. Memecoin has always kept pace with the times. In the first five stages of Memecoin, its core driving force mainly comes from within the crypto community and is closely linked with Web3 infrastructures such as blockchain, smart contracts, and tokens. However, the arrival of the sixth stage marks a new development phase for Memecoin. AI Agent, as an external force, successfully breaks boundaries, injecting new vitality into Memecoin and becoming its new engine.
The addition of AI Agent has brought a qualitative leap to Memecoin:
Narrative Upgrade: AI Agent elevates Memecoin from a simple "meme" to a digital asset with profound cultural connotation 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 Agent can monitor market dynamics in real-time and conduct data analysis, providing more accurate market strategies for Memecoin. For instance, the AI of $LUNA can automatically adjust the token buyback plan based on market conditions, thereby stabilizing the coin price.
Community Building: AI Agents can interact with community members in a personalized manner, enhancing user engagement. For example, through natural language processing technologies, AI Agents can understand user emotions and provide corresponding responses, enhancing community cohesion.
The addition of AI Agents, with their autonomy, creativity, and social capabilities, 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 and continuously driving industry innovation and development.
IV. Acceleration Stage: AI Agents Become the New Infrastructure of Web3
AI Agent, as an intelligent entity capable of autonomous learning, decision-making, and task execution, is gradually becoming the new infrastructure of the Web3 world. Its unique position in Web3 stems from its outstanding performance in economic independence, deep integration with smart contracts, and driving innovation in Web3.
1. Economically independent intelligent individuals
In traditional internet environments, AI Agents are limited in functionality due to the lack of legitimate digital identity and asset ownership. However, in Web3, leveraging technologies such as wallets, decentralized identity (DID), and public/private keys, AI Agents can obtain independent digital identities and accounts, allowing them to own and manage assets, and possess the capability to execute verifications and signatures. Thus, AI Agents become independent economic entities—digital citizens of the Web3 world. This capability allows AI Agents to actively participate in various financial and economic activities in Web3.
2. The best partner for smart contracts
Smart contracts and AI Agents, these seemingly independent concepts, are deeply integrating under the promotion of blockchain and artificial intelligence, becoming the best partners for each other.
We compare the features of smart contracts and AI Agents, as shown in Chart 4-1.
The combination of AI Agent 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 capabilities and automated execution: As a wise brain, AI Agents can analyze complex issues, make decisions, and then execute the decision results automatically through smart contracts, improving efficiency.
Integration of on-chain data and off-chain data: Smart contracts primarily handle on-chain data, while AI Agents can utilize both on-chain data and off-chain data (such as sensor data, social media, and market data) for more comprehensive analysis and decision-making.
Combining 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 decentralized applications (DApps).
By deeply integrating with smart contracts, AI Agent will play a more important role in Web3, driving innovation and transformation in Web3.
V. AI Agents Open a New Intelligent Era for Web3
AI Agents, as new infrastructure, are leading Web3 into a new intelligent era. This is mainly reflected in the infrastructure and application innovation of various public chains, covering areas such as AI memecoin, systems and tools, AgentFi, AI Payment, gaming and entertainment, etc., with more information available online.
Among many public chains, Arweave/AO is highly compatible with AI development in terms of architecture and system resources, and the community places high importance on the development of AI Agents, viewing the implementation of AI Agent applications as a common goal and action guide, which is worth focusing on.
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 aligns closely 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 perfectly with AO's system resource characteristics. 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 computing performance bottlenecks; it can provide trusted data resources for AI models, helping to reduce model bias during training.
In terms of key technologies: With the support of three key technologies—WASM64, WeaveDrive, and Llama.cpp large language model inference engine—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 basic protocols: FusionFi Protocol (FFP) is a protocol specification and development tool aimed at connecting different Agents, building information bridges, and standardizing interactions between DApp Agents. Through FFP, seamless integration of various financial services such as transactions, loans, futures, etc., can be achieved, creating a decentralized financial ecosystem across applications and scenarios.
In terms of trusted data: Dria enables AI models to access the latest, complete, and verified information, effectively reducing the common biases and inaccuracies of centralized data sources, thus providing high-quality data sources for AI Agent applications.
In terms of asset innovation: The initiator of EverVision, @outprog, innovatively proposed the concept of "AgentFi Notes" aimed at reconstructing decentralized trust among entities through AgentFi Notes. This concept enables everyone to exercise sovereignty, issue their own notes, and manage assets, integrating various financial scenarios such as exchanges, futures, collateral lending, and stablecoins.
In terms of application innovation: Permaswap is the leading DEX in the ecosystem, which, after launching the FusionFi Protocol, has integrated various financial forms and developed into a super aggregator of liquidity. Botega, as the first autonomous agent-driven DEX in the ecosystem, has built an AMM system with independent processes, capable of autonomously executing advanced order types such as tracking stop-loss, dollar-cost averaging, and limit orders, while intelligently allocating liquidity and enhancing trading efficiency.
As conditions mature, Arweave/AO, with its advantages in permanent data and data atomic asset storage and ultra-parallel computing, may stimulate the development potential of data-driven intelligent business, thereby meeting the needs of real economic activities on/off the chain.
Although the Arweave/AO ecosystem is still in its infancy, the upstream and downstream of the ecosystem are developing collaboratively, becoming active builders in the intelligent era of Web3, with promising future development prospects.
Summary of the full text
The development history of Web3 is a continuous process of innovation and iteration. Core elements such as distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and tokens have played key roles in the early and developmental stages of Web3, driving innovation and maturity in areas such as cryptographic digital currencies, public chains, and DeFi.
Today, AI Agent, as a new type of infrastructure for Web3, integrates deeply with other core elements and can play a role in various fields such as Crypto, GameFi, Gaming, Social, and the Metaverse, undoubtedly giving rise to entirely new applications and business models. From AI Memecoin to AgentFi, these innovative cases indicate that AI Agent has become the core driving force for the intelligent upgrade of the Web3 ecosystem.
With the continuous improvement of the public chain ecosystem and the ongoing advancement of AI technology, AI Agent will play an increasingly important role in Web3, opening a more intelligent, open, and inclusive new digital era.
