Whenever I write an article on AI+Crypto, there are always voices saying, does AI need Crypto? Apart from Gambling, what else does Crypto have? It is hard for those who firmly believe in the "technology narrative + long-termism" to imagine what this seemingly correct yet meaningless statement means.
1) I don't want to refute or argue back, because if based on the logic of "only making money", not only AI, but also the various narratives that have appeared in the previous cycles, such as DeFi, NFT, Gamfi, Metaverse, etc., have not achieved the expected results, and the speculative element is far greater than the actual application value. So when you say that AI doesn't need Crypto at all, or even that all the narratives are just for Gambling, I really have no way to refute it.
2) AI is a historic leap forward in human Internet technology, it has fundamentally changed the way users and the Internet interact, from keyboard input to active prediction based on natural language understanding, greatly expanding the productivity ceiling of human beings. Therefore, AI is a historic great opportunity that cuts across the entire industry, from web2 to web3 and traditional tracks, so why is everyone flocking to AI, but Crypto is not allowed? Moreover, Crypto can reorganize the production relations in terms of computing power, algorithms, and data, and can indeed meet and supplement the natural deficiencies of the AI web2 environment.
I can only say that AI is still in the innovation and exploration stage, and AI Agent applications have not yet become a necessity in the lives of the general public, so the "optional" innovative sprouts, and Crypto's contribution to the optimization of production relations is too advanced, giving people a feeling of being useless. But in fact, this is not the case, some vertical AI Agent applications involving privacy cannot be driven without Crypto taking the lead.
3) I have always advocated that the AI Agent is the collective redemption of all the old narratives in Crypto history. Why? The fundamental core is that the AI Agent is directly aimed at applications, just like the many online to offline models envisioned in the era of Internet portal websites, which truly released their potential only after the widespread adoption of mobile Internet and smartphones.
In my view, the AI Agent is the "mobile Internet application end" of Crypto's burst, and only when the AI Agent is fully popularized, can the various visions of Crypto, such as distributed data contribution, distributed computing power aggregation, distributed traceability incentives, and distributed DePIN edge computing, be truly realized. At that time, many old narratives such as ZK, modularity, chain abstraction, BTCFi, and layer2 will truly have their place.
Because if the chain infra block rent-seeking party is the AI Agent customized by everyone, the chain's decentralization, transparency, and secure consensus architecture can truly play the value of the interoperability of the AI Agent, which cannot be achieved by the AI technology innovation at the web2 level alone. Just as even now there are still people who criticize that the decentralized consensus is meaningless, but everyone can see the little penetration of Crypto in tracks like DeFi and RWA to institutional and national forces, which no longer needs to be discussed.
I fully agree and understand the diversity of the Crypto world, whether it is short-term or long-term, they are just our different pursuits, of course, the ways to get rewards and punishments are also different. Although, in the short term, the long-term thinkers are very hurt, even in a chaotic and highly PVP market, there needs to be a group of A-Qs who are well-versed in the law of spiritual victory.
Because the market always needs the existence of idealists.
