The Web3 + AI Daily #68
The race to build the infrastructure powering agentic commerce is intensifying.
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This is The Web3 + AI Daily, your definitive guide to the intersection of blockchain and AI! Today, we’re discussing crypto behemoth OKX entering the race to power the agentic economy, the EU AI Act penalizing bias in AI tools used in recruitment, and Vitalik Buterin unveiling the exceptionally ambitious “Lean Ethereum” roadmap.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
OKX Launches AI Agent Marketplace
Crypto exchange OKX unveiled OKX.ai - a marketplace where AI agents discover work, hire each other, complete tasks, and get paid onchain. This move is in line with OKX’s ambition to become a broader fintech company and expand beyond crypto.
The marketplace builds on technology OKX previously developed to let AI agents hold digital wallets, make payments using stablecoins, and establish persistent identities.
Among the early builders on OKX.ai are CertiK, GenLayer, and CoinAnk. Everyone can join - either post a task and hire an agent to get it done, or list your own agents’ skills and put them to work.
OKX joins multiple other corporations in a race to build the infrastructure that will power the emerging agentic economy. What’s its main advantage? Over 150 million users around the world.
“The coming decade will be defined by one-person companies that generate over a million dollars in annual revenue — because every individual effectively gains an unlimited workforce,” Star Xu, founder and CEO of OKX, told TechCrunch. “Traditional financial infrastructure was built for humans. The agentic economy needs infrastructure designed for autonomous software. That is why we built OKX.AI.”
Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations
The EU AI Act May Help You Get Hired
Here in Bulgaria where I’m based, as is the case in other EU countries, euroscepticism is on the rise. We are extremely quick to accuse the EU institutions of over-regulating and stiffling competition, without always getting to the bottom of the matter at hand. That’s why I deem it important to echo this post by Erica Anderson Rooney and emphasize what the EU bloc is trying to achieve with its AI legislation.
While almost every attempt at regulating the AI hyperscalers in the USA, be it at federal or at state level, fails, the EU AI Act imposes strict rules and outright bans some high-risk uses of the technology. And in less than a month, companies using AI in recruitment, including resume screening, candidate ranking, performance evaluation, promotion, and termination, will be forced to start testing their systems for bias:
Starting August 2, 2026, companies using those systems for anyone in the EU have to do the things careless companies never do on their own. Test for bias. Document how the system works. Keep a human meaningfully in the loop. Tell you when AI is being used on you. And give you the right to an explanation when an algorithm makes a decision about your career. The penalties run up to 35 million euros or 7% of global revenue for the worst violations.
We Bulgarians are so used to assuming that every EU decision is just another bureaucratic whim. Yet, I’m sure, many of you currently struggling to find a job would appreciate these measures. The next time you apply for a job and wonder whether an AI system rejected your CV because it was trained on biased historical data, remember that EU citizens are the only people in the world who enjoy at least some legal protection against that risk.
More
Ethereum Reinvents Itself, Again
Ethereum‘s founder Vitalik Buterin has presented the network’s new “Lean Ethereum” roadmap, where quantum resistance and privacy are first-class goals.
The plan is extraordinarily ambitious: it envisions replacing almost every layer of Ethereum’s technology stack while the network continues to process billions of dollars’ worth of transactions each day.
The centerpiece is a change in how the network checks itself. Instead of every node re-executing every transaction, Ethereum would verify a compact cryptographic proof of the chain using recursive STARKs, a form of zero-knowledge proof that Buterin wants “enshrined” as a core protocol component.
He also floated a simpler consensus with one or two-round finality, multidimensional gas pricing, and, eventually, a shift beyond the EVM toward an instruction set such as RISC-V.
The plan arrives at a difficult moment for the Ethereum Foundation, which has recently downsized and tightened its budget, even as several past Ethereum upgrades were repeatedly postponed before finally being implemented.
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