On January 12th, a16z crypto published an article titled "Artificial Intelligence in 2026: Three Major Trends," which mentioned:
In 2026, AI will be used to handle more substantial research tasks. AI will evolve from simple question-and-answer to truly assisting high-level research: understanding complex instructions like guiding doctoral students, proposing novel conjectures, and even independently solving extremely difficult mathematical problems (such as Putnam). Research styles will shift to a "polymath" model, using the "illusion" of AI to stimulate creativity and producing high-quality results through multi-layered "agent-wrapped-agent" workflows.
The shift is from "Know Your Customer" (KYC) to "Know Your Agent" (KYA). The biggest bottleneck in the agent economy is no longer intelligence, but identity and trust. The number of non-human agents far exceeds that of humans, yet they remain "unbanked ghosts." It is imperative to rapidly establish KYA (Know Your Agent) infrastructure: binding agents to their entities, permissions, and responsibilities through encrypted signature credentials, enabling AI agents to securely participate in financial and trading activities.
Addressing the "hidden taxes" on open networks. AI agents massively extract information from open websites, bypassing existing revenue streams like advertising and subscriptions, creating a persistent "hidden tax" on content creators and open networks, threatening the sustainability of the internet ecosystem. Existing AI licensing agreements are merely temporary patches and financially unsustainable. The future requires a new techno-economic model, leveraging blockchain to achieve real-time, usage-based nanopayments and complex attribution, allowing value to flow automatically and equitably to every entity contributing information.
