Since the launch of Ethereum, countless project teams have tried to build the "WeChat", "Baidu", "Google", "YouTube" of the crypto ecosystem on the blockchain...
This attempt began in the ICO boom of 2017 and has continued to this day. Without going into details, there are already many applications similar to the Lens protocol on the market.
However, unfortunately, none of these applications have truly broken out.
This has been a problem that has troubled me for a long time.
Is decentralized, permissionless applications really not that attractive?
Are people really willing to sacrifice their phone numbers, their identities, and even expose their faces through video to register these applications?
The reason I can think of is:
WeChat has accumulated too many of our social relationships, and it is difficult for us to leave these relationships simply to pursue "privacy" and "freedom" and try a new application.
YouTube has accumulated too much valuable information, and it is difficult for us to leave this information source simply to pursue "privacy" and "freedom" and build a competing information library.
...
It is precisely because of these long-accumulated information resources that we find it difficult to break away from the current information circle and social network, and have to continue to sell our identities and sacrifice our privacy.
But do these decentralized, permissionless applications really stagnate and wither away? Will they forever remain lukewarm?
I have always felt that something is not quite right, but I cannot find a strong explanation.
However, when I read the article the other day (link at the end of the text), I came across the following passage:
"If we want AI Agents to 'execute tasks autonomously', then they must necessarily have an 'autonomous identity' as an independent entity. Then the question arises, if it is as an independent entity, where is the ID of this AI Agents registered? How does it manage its own finances?"
"In Web2, this is a headache: it is almost impossible to independently register an ID in the next few years; without an ID, you cannot open a bank account. If the ID and bank account are still using the 'owner's', this AI Agent cannot be called having an 'independent identity'."
"From the above example, we can see that the AI Agent must be an independent entity, with an independent financial account, and can 'execute tasks autonomously', in order to have more room for play. Otherwise, it is still at the bot stage."
"It is almost impossible for the Web2 world to register an ID and open a bank account for the AI Agent in the short term, but fortunately we have the Crypto on-chain world. In the Crypto world, it is very natural to register an on-chain identity and an on-chain wallet for the AI Agent."
After reading this passage, I realized that the potential application scenarios of these decentralized, permissionless applications are most likely not for humans, but for AI agents.
In my previous article, I had mentioned that I believe crypto assets are more like they are prepared for AI agents. Because AI agents need to realize network payments, they cannot go to the bank to open an account like humans, nor can they verify their social identity like humans, so the decentralized, permissionless crypto assets are just suitable for them.
But at that time, I did not extend this idea to the broader decentralized applications, especially the decentralized, permissionless content applications I mentioned above.
Now, when I put this idea together, many problems become clear.
In the future, AI agents will not only be able to realize mutual payments and transfers through crypto assets, but also be able to realize mutual information interaction, publishing and sharing through these decentralized content applications (such as "decentralized WeChat", "decentralized YouTube", etc.).
Of course, whether the forms of these applications will definitely be like the so-called "decentralized YouTube", "decentralized WeChat" that we see today is uncertain.
This is possible, but not necessarily.
Because the current applications are designed according to our human habits. How AI agents will communicate more efficiently and smoothly with each other in the future, we still do not know.
Regardless of what the form of these applications may be, I believe that the applications for information sharing and interconnection between AI agents in the future will definitely be based on blockchain and permissionless.
Therefore, when AI agents explode, the next wave of explosions will definitely be the various applications based on blockchain public chains: they are decentralized, censorship-resistant, and permissionless.
