The Web3 + AI Daily #58
Does AI really need blockchain, and can we build private and equitable AI?
Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!
This is The Web3 + AI Daily, your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI)! It’s Friday, so today’s issue offers a collection of opinion pieces, research papers, and conversations for you to mull over during the weekend. I’m sure they’ll inform, shape, and even challenge your thinking about the future of Crypto x AI.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
Vitalik: Focus on Building AI That’s Private and Equitable
This week, Ethereum‘s Vitalik Buterin published an update of his 2024 Crypto x AI thesis, accompanied by a strong message to the crypto community, a message that resonates strongly with me. Rather than racing to build the ephemeral AGI, Vitalik says, the goal should be guiding AI development in a way that protects human freedom, spreads power more evenly, and avoids both extreme AI risks and everyday security failures.
When I began writing this newsletter over two years ago, I wanted to unpack what AGI actually meant. OpenAI‘s Sam Altman, Google‘s Mustafa Suleyman, and a bunch of other AI executives were going on and on about AGI being just around the corner. Meanwhile, leading researchers and scientists couldn’t even agree on a clear definition of AGI. They still don’t.
I eventually abandoned that idea because I assumed that once those predictions failed to materialize, people would stop buying into the hyperbole. I was wrong. What’s more, I failed to recognize that hype and hyperbole serve a purpose. They captivate the public so effectively that we lose sight of who actually controls AI, and who stands to benefit from it.
Fortunately, Vitalik once again appears as the level-headed voice that reaffirms crypto’s vision of democratizing access, enforcing privacy, and distributing wealth.
I want an AI future where we foster human freedom and empowerment.
To achieve that, and to position Ethereum as the home of the emerging Agentic economy, Buterin outlines several short-term tasks:
Building tooling to make more trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible
Establishing Ethereum as an economic layer for AI-related interactions
Making the cypherpunk “mountain man” vision ((don’t trust; verify everything) a reality
Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations
Why Does AI Need Crypto?
In one of its latest blog posts, the a16z crypto team argues that as AI systems scale, they are outpacing the trust and identity frameworks on which the current internet, designed for human interaction at a much smaller scale, relies. This creates challenges in authenticity, privacy, and payments that traditional internet infrastructure can’t solve on its own.
The problem isn’t that AI exists — it’s that the internet does not have a native way to separate humans from machines while preserving privacy and usability. This is where blockchains come in.
Raising the costs of AI deepfakes and impersonation through decentralized Proof-of-Personhood solutions;
Ensuring that agents’ identities are portable and universal, while carrying references to capabilities, permissions, and payment endpoints across chats, emails, browsers, and APIs;
Catering to AI agents’ needs of micropayments, by enabling near-zero-cost transactions and more finely-grained payment splits;
Enforcing privacy and security.
Blockchains as the Coordination Layer for Collaborative AI
Building on the use cases highlighted by a16z crypto, and circling back to Vitalik’s thesis I cited in the beginning, researcher and content creator Stacy Muur offers another point of view on why AI agents don’t need more intelligence, but need crypto.
Muur confirms the importance of Web3 decentralized identity and micropayment solutions, but also emphasizes blockchains’ role as the coordination layer in multi-agent systems:
Different models operate in different formats, which makes coordination difficult without a shared language or control layer. When one AI comes up with an idea, another AI improves it, and a third AI checks it, it’s hard to figure out who gets credit, who gets paid, and who is responsible.
This is where crypto and blockchain naturally fit in, not as intelligence but as infrastructure by recording who did what, when it happened, and how much each contributor added. Through verifiable logs, hashes, attestations, and automated incentives, crypto can act as the accounting and coordination layer that allows diverse AI systems to collaborate.
Muur outlines the must-watch projects pushing the Crypto x AI intersection forward, including Covalent, Questflow, Sentient Labs, Billions Network, cheqd, Vouched, Catena, and more.
Power Grid : Industrial Age :: Blockchains : Digital Age
In an op-ed for CoinDesk, Altius Labs‘s Annabelle Huang argues that “if autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) payments are the new electricity, then blockchains must be seen as the new power grid.” M2M payments - tiny, continuous financial transactions between devices without human involvement - will be as foundational to the digital economy as electricity was to the industrial age.
Today’s payment systems are episodic and human-mediated, but future connected devices (e.g., sensors, satellites, factories) will need to transact in real time for data, power, services, and logistics. Just as electricity became an ambient, standardized utility enabling mass automation, M2M payments must become seamless and continuous to unlock a true machine economy.
Blockchain technology, with near-instant and low-cost transactions, is seen as the essential infrastructure, or the “power grid,” for these payments. Building neutral, interoperable, and high-performance blockchain rails is critical to allowing autonomous systems to coordinate and innovate without friction.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found this article insightful.
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Disclaimer: The content of this newsletter is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing contained herein should be construed as financial advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any of the companies or assets mentioned.
Please don’t take my views at face value. Instead, do your own research (DYOR), think critically, and share your perspective so we can challenge ideas, learn from one another, and arrive at better conclusions through thoughtful discussion.