Author: YB
Compiled by: TechFlow
Soon, all organizations will need to establish on-chain entities. Compared to traditional limited liability companies (LLCs), on-chain businesses are not only more efficient, but can also be launched faster.
In the past month, I have developed a new habit: whenever I come across tweets related to AI intelligent agents on X (formerly Twitter), I save them for further in-depth research. In the past two weeks, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: many messages about intelligent agents seem to have gone beyond metaverse frameworks like Truth Terminal or Zerebro.
For example:
Balaji retweeted a post by Aravind Srinivas, who proposed developing a Perplexity browser that treats intelligent agents as a core feature.
OtCo demonstrated how an intelligent agent can register an LLC for itself in Delaware.
Circle released a detailed tutorial guiding developers on how to integrate USDC stablecoin into various intelligent agents.
A few days ago, Satya Nadella also demonstrated Copilot Workspace, the first integrated development environment (IDE) designed for intelligent agents.
At first glance, these all seem to be the usual discussions of large tech companies on intelligent agents, which is not surprising. After all, intelligent agents have become a hot area for major companies to explore.
But this is precisely my point - for the first time, I feel that the encryption industry and the mainstream technology industry are beginning to discuss the same topic. Although their entry points are different, they are essentially exploring the possibilities of intelligent agents.
The encryption industry has always seemed a bit "unorthodox" to the general public, and even within the tech industry, it is often seen as the "annoying little brother". This is not without reason - our industry has produced so many absurd news stories that even insiders have to admit that some trends are really baffling.
Through these changes, I see a new trend: the encryption industry is gradually integrating into mainstream technology discussions, and intelligent agents may become a bridge between the two.
The past narratives of the encryption industry often lack intersection with other tech fields in the short term. For example, a top large language model (LLM) engineer seems to have nothing to do with 10k PFP (avatar-type Non-Fungible Token projects). And why would scientists studying longevity be interested in new yield assets?
Overall, the narratives of the encryption industry have mainly attracted two types of people so far: artists and quantitative analysts.
However, there are now signs that this limitation may be broken!
Although we still have a long way to go to reach this goal, I have personally seen some glimmers of hope.
Currently, there are three key topics worth exploring in depth:
Relaxation of encryption regulation
Accelerationist bubble
Crypto-driven role models
Let's explore them one by one.
Relaxation of encryption regulation
This week, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler announced that he will resign on January 20 next year. If you have a basic understanding of the encryption industry, you will know that this news is as significant as Harry Potter defeating Voldemort.
Over the past four years, Gensler has been the main obstacle to the U.S. encryption industry. He not only slowed down the regulatory process, but also took active suppressive measures, putting tremendous pressure on this emerging industry. As Linda's tweet said - many companies, including Coinbase and ConsenSys, had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and fighting in Washington to survive.
And now, the potential successors seem to be completely changing direction.
Regardless of who ultimately takes over, it is certain that the Trump administration clearly wants to be more supportive of the encryption industry than the previous administration. To be frank, this goal is not difficult to achieve.
In my election week article "Where Did Fairshake PAC's $133 Million Go?", I mentioned that Bernie Moreno (Republican) won the Ohio Senate election with $40.1 million in donations, successfully defeating Sherrod Brown (Democrat).
Moreno's victory is a milestone for the entire encryption industry. He has long been an advocate of encryption technology, while Brown has been one of the main obstacles to encryption regulatory reform in the Senate.
This series of changes may herald a more friendly policy environment for the encryption industry.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the discussion around the potential topic of a "U.S. Strategic Bit Reserve" is itself astonishing! Three months ago, if someone had mentioned this concept, I might have thought it was a fantasy. However, with the recent rapid development of the encryption industry, such as the continued rise in Bit price and the surge in inflows to BlackRock's Bit ETF, all of this makes us have to seriously consider: the federal government may actually include Bit in its balance sheet.
So how can these regulatory advances help the encryption industry cross the chasm and enter a wider range of technology applications?
In the past, developers in many other tech fields have been skeptical about the reliability of encryption technology. They are concerned that the volatility of this technology may bring potential legal risks, such as lawsuits and fines, to their core projects, and therefore have been reluctant to integrate encryption technology.
However, as the new administration gradually embraces encryption technology and formulates clearer regulatory rules, developers in other fields will also gradually feel more confident in exploring the application of encryption technology in their strategies.
Vitalik accurately summarized this point in a screenshot: the lack of clear regulatory clarity for serious projects has seriously hindered developers' acceptance of encryption technology. And those who have not deeply participated in the encryption ecosystem may form an impression of encryption based on some exaggerated news headlines (such as the millionaire stories of Moodeng and Bonk). This obviously cannot effectively attract top engineers like Anthropic to join the encryption industry, right?
Hopefully, in the next four years, the pro-encryption politicians will do their utmost to make the adoption of encryption technology simpler and safer, thereby attracting more outside talents to join the industry.
Accelerationist bubble
Last week, I read Packy's article "The Tump Bubble". In it, he proposed that the next four years will be a period of encouraging risk-taking, nurturing visionary creativity, and a pervasive futurist optimism.
Although I do not fully agree with his views - some parts of the article seem overly optimistic and even exaggerated, Packy has raised an important point: our way of thinking about "progress" is undergoing a "shift in atmosphere". Future developments will be faster, crazier, and more experimental.
This phenomenon is referred to as the "inflection bubble" by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Harris.
The so-called inflection bubble is a state where "investors believe the future will be significantly different from the past". Think about the internet bubble. If you believe that fundamental changes will occur in the future, you will invest in assets that are most likely to benefit from such changes.
To better illustrate this concept of "actively shaping the future", I quote the explanation from Truth Terminal.
If you don't want to read the entire article, here are the key points you need to remember:
I'm not saying that 90% of the current memecoins will succeed - but this form is still very novel. Only when the design of tokenomics becomes more sophisticated will we see memecoins truly comparable to "quality investments" in the traditional sense.
With the rapid development of fields such as energy, AI, bioscience, and gaming, combined with the model of AI agents and crypto Tokens, the efficiency of trying new ideas may increase tenfold.
Imagine if you are a senior nuclear engineer who has worked in the energy industry for decades and want to realize a bold vision. The traditional path may require you to spend months convincing venture capitalists to support your idea, build a team, and establish a community, a process that is both lengthy and uncertain.
But you can also choose the following approach:
Write a white paper that clearly articulates your background, theory, plan, and vision;
Deploy a "brand agent" on Twitter to help spread your idea;
Raise initial funding through a Token launch;
Leverage the power of agents to build a community of core supporters (e.g., through social tipping);
Recruit team members from the community or attract more talent through bounty tasks.
I know you might say, "YB, aren't you describing the ICO craze of 2017?"
You're right.
But I believe that ICOs may have simply appeared at the wrong time.
Now, with the improvement of crypto infrastructure, a more friendly regulatory environment, a maturing market, and widespread institutional participation, these changes have laid the foundation for the success of similar models.
Of course, this framework may still give rise to a large number of worthless projects. But how is this different from the "power law" often mentioned in the venture capital world? After all, the vast majority of projects fail, while a few successful ones generate huge returns, a phenomenon that is common in any field.
If the market environment in 2017 was not yet sufficient to support this model, then by 2024, perhaps we will see some early DePin (decentralized IoT) and DeSci (decentralized science) projects begin to emerge.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this is the first time I've felt that the focus of the crypto industry has intersected with the interests of other tech fields.
Not only intelligent agents, but also topics such as bioscience research and GPU allocation are starting to receive attention.
I haven't delved into pump.science yet, but it's not surprising that it has become a hot topic in the current field. Of course, there are still some issues that need to be addressed behind this model, such as crazy speculation, legality, and security (I believe those involved in the crypto industry are well aware of this).
However, it is worth noting that people have shown great enthusiasm for the concept of "using crypto financing to support non-crypto tasks". This trend may indicate that crypto technology is gradually moving towards more widespread practical application.
The core idea here is that since the early success of Kickstarter in the 2010s, the crowdfunding model for creative projects has been proven effective. Compared to decision-making in closed boardrooms, leveraging the wisdom and support of the masses is undoubtedly more advantageous, as people are eager to participate!
However, the success of this model may require the continuous development and accumulation of technological and social consensus. Now, it seems that various conditions are forming a "perfect storm": positive changes in the political environment, the gradual maturity of crypto and AI technologies, and the creative explosion brought by the accelerationism bubble.
Nevertheless, I still believe that a key catalytic factor is missing for this concept to be taken seriously!
Crypto-Driven Paradigm
A recent highlight of Onchain AI and Goat meta is that they have successfully "attracted" some AI and large language model (LLM) developers into the crypto space.
Honestly, who could have predicted that the interview with Threadguy and Andy Ayery would become a hot topic?
If you think about it, this is indeed an amazing phenomenon.
It's also interesting to see Beff Jezos cheering on his friend Shaw, who is developing the ai16z and Eliza frameworks, a launch platform designed for agentic coins. The focus here is not on Beff himself, but on a developer deeply involved in the AI field, who has established a connection with the crypto space through the experiments of LLM developers on Onchain AI.
What I want to emphasize is that in the coming year, we will see some individuals from different tech fields officially embrace crypto technology and demonstrate the efficiency of the agent + Token model in building major projects.
Once a few successful cases emerge, others will be inspired and start to try to realize their own ideas.
The Token launches and experiments we are currently seeing are just "small steps".
It only takes a few successful examples to trigger a group effect.
It can be said that... it starts with a slow accumulation, and then comes a sudden explosion!
That's all for today's sharing.
I believe everyone has experienced a lot of busyness and challenges this past week, and I hope you can take some time this weekend to go out and relax!
