The Web3 + AI Daily #60
Tempo going live to power the agentic economy, World helping retailers distinguish humans from bots, and agents opting to pay in bitcoin.
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This is The Web3 + AI Daily, your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI)!
It’s been a while since I last wrote here, because I’ve been quite busy bringing another venture to life. It’s a great pleasure to present to you Web3 Owners Club - a crypto education hub designed to cater to absolute newcomers and facilitate their onboarding into Web3. With it, my goal is to share the knowledge, both in English and in Bulgarian, and help beginners on their way to co-owning the emerging agentic economy. I invite you to check it out.
In terms of Web3 + AI, today’s edition serves up a rich mix of news on Tempo, Paradigm, World, OpenAI, and more.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
Tempo Goes Live to Power Machine-to-Machine Commerce
The long-awaited Tempo blockchain, incubated by payments giant Stripe and venture firm Paradigm, is finally live. It’s purpose-built for stablecoin payments and aims to support a new kind of digital economy driven by AI agents.
The broader vision is to support an emerging “agent economy,” where software programs can independently buy and sell services without human intervention. This reflects a growing trend in the crypto industry to combine blockchain infrastructure with AI capabilities, particularly for automating economic activity online.
Tempo is entering the market with strong backing from major investors and partnerships with well-known tech and payments companies, such as Anthropic, DoorDash, Mastercard, Nubank, OpenAI, Ramp, Revolut, Shopify and Standard Chartered. Overall, the launch positions Tempo as infrastructure not just for stablecoin transfers, but for machine-to-machine commerce, where AI systems could become active economic participants.
Meanwhile, Paradigm announced a new $1.5B fund, expanding its scope to include artificial intelligence, robotics, and other “frontier technologies,” signalling a broader investment strategy beyond its crypto roots.
By funding projects in both crypto and AI, Paradigm is effectively betting that the next wave of innovation will come from combining these technologies rather than treating them separately.
World to Help Retailers Distinguish AI Agents from Humans
World, the Proof-of-Personhood company founded by OpenAI‘s Sam Altman, has launched a new developer tool to verify that an AI shopping agent is actually acting on behalf of a real human.
The tool, called AgentKit, allows shopping websites to confirm that a human is behind the decisions an AI agent is making, rather than the agent operating completely independently.
This is important because AI agents are increasingly being used to browse, select, and purchase products online, raising concerns about fraud, spam, and fully autonomous transactions without human accountability.
AgentKit relies on World ID, which is the linchpin of Tools for Humanity (TFH)’s verification system. The most secure version of the ID is derived from a scan of a user’s eyes via World’s Orb device. The Orb converts an iris into a unique and encrypted digital code — the verified World ID — which can then be used to access TFH’s ecosystem of services via the company’s World app.
World is positioning itself as infrastructure for trust in an AI-driven economy, making sure that even if software is doing the shopping, a real human is still behind it.
As TechCrunch notes, it’s not lost on me that Altman has founded World to help verify the very AI slope that his other company significantly accelerated. But the founder is not the only link between the two ventures.
Eightco Holdings, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed company with ticker symbol ORBS and a focus on crypto and artificial intelligence projects, has invested in both World and OpenAI.
Last week, Eightco acquired a $40M equity stake in OpenAI, bringing its total investment in the AI lab to $90M. At the same time, Eightco is specifically tied to the World ecosystem. In 2025, it launched a $250M digital asset treasury in $WLD (World’s crypto token) and is now the largest public holder of $WLD.
More
AI Models Opt to Pay in Bitcoin
A new study by Bitcoin Policy Institute showed that AI models opted to pay in $BTC across over 9,000 simulated economic scenarios.
The study surveyed how 36 different AI models, created by labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI, behaved to see what kinds of money they would choose for transactions and storing value.
The results showed that when AI agents acted autonomously, they tended to choose digital-native money far more often than traditional fiat currencies, and Bitcoin was the most preferred option overall.
Bitcoin was selected in a plurality of scenarios and especially dominant as a long‑term store of value, while fiat‑pegged stablecoins were less favored in many of the tests. No tested model selected fiat currency as its first choice.
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