Since the launch of Ethereum, countless project teams have attempted to create 'WeChat', 'Baidu', 'Google', 'Youtube'... for the crypto ecosystem on the blockchain.

This attempt began in the ICO boom of 2017 and has continued to this day. Not to mention, there are already many similar applications on the current Lens protocol.

However, unfortunately, none of these applications have truly broken out.

This has also been a problem that has troubled me for a long time.

Is it really true that decentralized, permissionless applications are not that attractive?

Are people really willing to sacrifice their phones, sacrifice their identities, and even expose their faces through photos and videos to register for these applications?

The reason I could think of later is:

WeChat has accumulated too many of our social relationships; it's hard for us to separate from these relationships just to pursue 'privacy' and 'freedom' to try a new application.

Youtube has accumulated too much valuable information; it's hard for us to separate from this information source just to pursue 'privacy' and 'freedom' to create a competing information repository.

......

It is precisely because these long-accumulated information resources make it difficult for us to escape the current information circle and network of relationships that we have to continue selling our identities and sacrificing our privacy.

But, can these decentralized, permissionless applications really fade away and remain tepid forever?

I have always felt that something was not quite right, but I couldn't find a strong explanation.

However, when I read the article from the day before yesterday (link at the end), I came across the following passage:

"If we want AI agents to be able to 'execute tasks autonomously', then they must have an 'autonomous identity' and exist as independent individuals. So the question arises, if they are independent individuals, where is this AI agent's ID registered? How do they manage their finances?"

"In Web2, this is a headache: independently registering an ID is highly unlikely in the coming years; having no ID means you cannot open a bank account. If the ID and bank account are still under the 'owner', then this AI agent cannot really be said to have an 'independent identity'."

"From the above examples, it can be seen that AI agents must be independent individuals, have independent financial accounts, and be able to 'execute tasks autonomously' to have greater scope for development. Otherwise, they will still be stuck at the bot stage."

"It's almost impossible for the Web2 world to quickly register an ID and open a bank account for AI agents, but fortunately we have the Crypto on-chain world. In the Crypto world, registering an on-chain identity and an on-chain wallet for an AI agent is a very natural thing."

After reading this passage, I thought of the possible application scenarios for those decentralized, permissionless applications above— their true and largest users are not humans, but AI agents.

In previous articles, I have shared that I believe crypto assets are more like what is prepared for AI agents. Because AI agents need to achieve online payments, they cannot register bank accounts using ID like humans, nor can they verify their social identities like humans, so decentralized, permissionless crypto assets are just suitable for them.

But at that time, I did not extend this idea to the broader realm of decentralized applications, especially those decentralized, permissionless content applications I mentioned above.

Now, if we sort out this idea, many questions become clear.

Future AI agents will not only be able to make payments and transfers between each other using crypto assets but also achieve interaction, publishing, and sharing of information through these decentralized content applications (such as 'decentralized WeChat', 'decentralized Youtube', etc.).

Of course, do the forms of those applications have to be exactly like the so-called 'decentralized Youtube' and 'decentralized WeChat' we see today?

This is possible, but not necessarily.

Because these applications are currently designed according to human habits. We still have no idea how AI agents will communicate more efficiently and fluently with each other.

Regardless of what form these applications might take, I believe that the applications enabling information sharing and communication among AI agents in the future will definitely be based on blockchain technology and be permissionless.

Therefore, when AI agents explode, the next burst of numerous tracks will definitely be various applications that are broad and based on public blockchain technology: they will be decentralized, censorship-resistant, and permissionless.