Written by: "Ping Shuo" Blockchain
"New infrastructure" refers to the underlying technical elements and architectures that have innovation-driven power, such as cryptography, tokens, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts. These technologies constitute the core pillars of Web3 development. The development process of Web3 is essentially a process of continuous iteration, integration, and promotion of innovation and change of these new infrastructures.
This article will divide the current development of Web3 into three stages from the perspective of "core elements", revealing the core elements of each stage as the driving force, 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 down 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:
Cryptocurrency ($BTC): As a carrier 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 provides possibilities 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 areas like currency and finance, value exchange and social collaboration, and the development of the internet, specifically reflected in the following aspects:
Gave rise to global digital currencies: Bitcoin pioneered permissionless global currency circulation, bringing new possibilities to areas such as cross-border payments and financial inclusion.
Built a decentralized trust mechanism: The characteristics of distributed ledger being open, transparent, and immutable have established a decentralized trust mechanism, promoting efficient value exchange and collaboration globally.
Opened the Web3 era: The successful verification of blockchain has validated the feasibility of blockchain technology, providing effective means for value storage and transfer, laying the foundation for the development of the Web3 value internet.
Bitcoin, as the pioneer of blockchain technology, has brought revolutionary changes and paved the way for the arrival of the Web3 era. However, Bitcoin's limited scalability makes it difficult to support complex applications like 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 basis of 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 2-1.
Smart contracts, Tokens, and distributed ledgers play important roles together in Ethereum's structural paradigm:
Distributed ledger (blockchain): Ensures the security and transparency of data. Constructs a diversified public chain ecosystem. Public chains are the cornerstone of ecosystem development, and their prosperity directly affects the overall development of Web3.
Smart contracts: 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 enhanced capital efficiency, DeFi 3.0 emphasized composability, while DeFi 4.0 focuses on AI intelligence.
Token: As a carrier of value and incentive mechanism, Tokens provide effective value capture methods for protocols, innovating value distribution methods, giving rise to ICOs, DeFi, and other innovative models, accelerating industry development.
In summary, distributed ledgers, smart contracts, and Tokens complement each other to form the infrastructure of the Web3 world at this stage. The innovation of Ethereum organically combines these three elements, generating powerful synergies that promote the prosperity of the ecosystem and record new highs in the total market value of the industry, marking the entry of the Web3 industry into a brand new stage of development.
However, after experiencing a phase of rapid early development, the Web3 industry also faces many challenges, such as declining interest in VC projects, unmet expectations from the Bitcoin ecosystem, and Ethereum trapped in the FUD dilemma, adding uncertainty to the market.
Currently, the industry has reached a critical turning point that requires new forces to break through bottlenecks and bring innovation and transformation.
III. The driving force behind AI Memecoin - AI Agent
Currently, we are in a 'Super Memecoin Cycle,' with tens of thousands of memecoins emerging. Memecoin, as a cryptocurrency originating from internet culture, has sparked waves of enthusiasm in the cryptocurrency market due to its strong community effects and viral spread. However, behind each wave of enthusiasm are 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. The first five stages of Memecoin's core driving force mainly come from within the crypto community and are closely linked with the Web3 infrastructure of blockchain, smart contracts, and Tokens. However, the arrival of the sixth stage marks a new phase of development for Memecoin. AI Agents, as an external force, have successfully broken the circle, injecting new vitality into Memecoin and becoming its new engine.
The addition of AI Agents has brought a qualitative leap to Memecoin:
Narrative upgrade: AI Agents elevate Memecoin from simple 'memes' to digital assets with profound cultural connotations by generating personalized and high-frequency content. For instance, AI-generated religious content for $GOAT not only attracted a large number of users but also built 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 example, the AI of $LUNA can automatically adjust the token buyback plan based on market conditions, thereby 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, enhancing community cohesion.
The addition of AI Agents, with their autonomy, creativity, and social capabilities, has elevated 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 changes to the entire Web3 ecosystem, and continuously driving industry innovation and development.
IV. Acceleration Stage: 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 promoting 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. In Web3, with the help of technologies such as wallets, decentralized identities (DID), and public/private keys, AI Agents can obtain independent digital identities and accounts, enabling them to own and manage assets and possess the ability to execute verifications and signatures. This allows AI Agents to become independent economic entities—digital citizens of the Web3 world. This capability enables 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, 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 Figure 4-1.
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 capabilities with automated execution: AI Agents, as intelligent brains, can analyze complex problems and make decisions, then automatically execute the decision results through smart contracts to improve efficiency.
Integration of on-chain and off-chain data: Smart contracts mainly 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 realize the vision of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and decentralized applications (DApps).
Through deep integration with smart contracts, AI Agents will play increasingly important roles in Web3, driving innovation and transformation.
V. AI Agents usher in a new intelligent era for Web3
As a new infrastructure, AI Agents are leading Web3 into a new intelligent era. This is primarily reflected in the infrastructure and application innovations of various public chains, covering areas including AI Memecoin, systems and tools, AgentFi, AI Payment, gaming and entertainment, and more information can be found online.
Among many public chains, Arweave/AO is highly compatible with AI's development in terms of architecture and system resources, and the community places a high emphasis on the development of AI Agents, aiming to promote the application of AI Agents as a common goal and action guide, which is worth significant attention.
In terms of system architecture: AO is designed using the Actor model, 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 a high demand for resources. This coincides with the system 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 performance bottlenecks; it can provide reliable data resources for AI models, aiding in learning training 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, such as Llama 3 and GPT-2, within smart contracts, laying a solid foundation for AI Agent application development and operation.
In terms of fundamental 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 trading, lending, and futures can be achieved, constructing a decentralized financial ecosystem across applications and scenarios.
In terms of reliable data: Dria enables artificial intelligence models to access up-to-date, complete, and verified information, effectively reducing common biases and inaccuracies of centralized data sources, thereby 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,' aiming to reconstruct decentralized trust among entities through AgentFi notes. This concept allows 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 DEX leader in the ecosystem. After launching the FusionFi Protocol, it integrated various financial forms and developed into a super aggregator of liquidity. Botega, as the first self-agent-driven DEX in the ecosystem, built an AMM system with independent processes, capable of autonomously executing advanced order types such as trailing stop-loss, regular investments, and limit orders, intelligently allocating liquidity to enhance trading efficiency.
As conditions mature, Arweave/AO, with its advantages in permanent storage of data and atomic data assets 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 can develop in synergy, becoming active builders of the intelligent era of Web3, and the 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 have played key roles in the early and development stages of Web3, driving innovation and maturation in areas such as cryptocurrency, public chains, and DeFi.
Today, AI Agents, as a new type of infrastructure for Web3, deeply integrate with other core elements and can play roles in various fields such as Crypto, GameFi, Gaming, Social, and the Metaverse, which will surely give rise to new applications and business models. From AI Memecoin to AgentFi, these innovative cases indicate that AI Agents have become a core driving force for the intelligent upgrade of the Web3 ecosystem.
As the public chain ecosystem continues to improve and AI technology advances, AI Agents will play an increasingly important role in Web3, ushering in a new era of more intelligent, open, and inclusive digital environments.
