Opinion Crypto has typically struggled for actual customers. AI would possibly lastly present them. Startups ought to prepare, says Jasper De Maere, Head of Research, Outlier Ventures. 

Web3 wasn’t designed for people at scale; it was constructed for machines. Its complexity has restricted its adoption, however the “Post Web” stack is taking form with AI brokers rising as autonomous financial actors.

Smart contracts, decentralized networks, and verifiable computation will stay. But now they’re being optimized for AI-driven execution, coordination, and intent-based automation.

The query isn’t whether or not it’s taking place however how briskly we have to adapt.

For the previous decade, we have now been beta-testing decentralized methods and functions. While hundreds of thousands of individuals have interaction with blockchain networks, DeFi protocols, and decentralized functions (dApps), the truth is that Web3 stays vastly underutilized.

Despite roughly 10% of the world allegedly proudly owning crypto, solely a fraction of those holders actively use decentralized functions as an actual various to Web2 or centralized platforms. This disconnect isn’t as a result of an absence of functionality in Web3 know-how, however fairly its usability challenges and inherent complexity.

In hindsight, Web3 was by no means designed for human customers at scale. It was designed for machines.

Now, with AI brokers rising as autonomous financial actors, the sleeping big of Web3 performance is waking up. The “Post Web” — a time period we coined at Outlier Ventures — creates a world the place brokers execute duties, handle belongings, and transact on our behalf. Every element of the Web3 stack can be repurposed. Once hindered by complexity, the infrastructure constructed for a decentralized world is now ideally suited to an web optimized for machines. 

AI brokers is not going to simply use Web3. They will unlock all of its potential.

The Giant Awakens

Web3 has been misunderstood. Many anticipated it to be a extra decentralized model of Web2, the place customers personal their belongings, take part in governance, and work together with permissionless functions.

In apply, Web3 has revolutionized back-end methods. As but, its know-how stays too advanced for the common consumer to deal with. Smart contracts, self-custody, and bridging throughout chains, require time, effort, and technical understanding that most individuals merely don’t have.

This is the place AI brokers change all the things. Unlike people, brokers thrive in complexity. They can course of huge quantities of knowledge, automate intricate workflows, and function seamlessly throughout decentralized networks. While human customers wrestle with onboarding, brokers can straight combine with good contracts, optimize for effectivity, and execute transactions with out friction.

For the primary time, Web3 may have customers who can absolutely leverage its capabilities. AI brokers will seamlessly work together with decentralized infrastructure, permitting Web3 to function on the scale it was all the time meant to.

The Post Web Tech Stack: Built for Machines

Web3 has spent the previous decade constructing decentralized infrastructure with out contemplating AI. With the rise of autonomous AI brokers, our excited about this stack should basically change.

In the Post Web, the place AI brokers exchange people as major customers, the stack undergoes two vital transformations:

Optimizing the current Web3 stack for AI brokers – Upgrading decentralized infrastructure to assist machine-driven transactions, intent execution, and autonomous coordination.

Building out a new agentic layer on high – A brand new computational and coordination layer for internet hosting, managing, and orchestrating AI brokers that deal with social and financial exercise on behalf of customers.

In our broader work at Outlier Ventures on the Post Web, we’ve examined this evolution in higher element. Put merely,, the Post Web stack consists of three core layers, every important for enabling an web optimized for machines.

1) The Agentic Layer: AI because the New Interface

In the Post Web, customers received’t should navigate wallets, exchanges, or dApps themselves; AI brokers will do it for them. These brokers act as customized digital intermediaries, executing transactions, managing belongings, and making advanced financial choices.

For this to work, the Agentic Layer would be the bridge between intent and execution. Users will categorical intent-based, high-level objectives and targets, comparable to investing in belongings, reserving journey, or negotiating contracts, and brokers will deal with the remainder.

Smart wallets will evolve into sovereign id hubs, storing private knowledge, belongings, and permissions, permitting brokers to behave with precision. This shift signifies that as a substitute of counting on centralized platforms, people will delegate actions to sovereign AI, giving them full management whereas eliminating the necessity for direct interactions with advanced methods.

The agentic layer is the most important green-field alternative for daring founders who’ve the will and talent to mix probabilistic AI capabilities with deterministic good contracts and DLT. There is a necessity for marketplaces, coordination layers, frameworks, and extra, all of which must be developed and improved.

2) The Trust Layer: Smart Contracts & DLT because the Backbone

If AI brokers are to execute real-world duties, they want deterministic, verifiable environments the place transactions and agreements will be enforced with out ambiguity. This is the place blockchain and good contracts turn out to be vital.

Today’s AI fashions function on probabilistic logic. Based on coaching knowledge, they predict the subsequent almost definitely consequence. However, financial transactions require certainty and enforceability: a financial institution switch, authorized contract, or commerce have to be executed with absolute finality.

Smart contracts present this lacking piece. They provide immutable, self-executing agreements, permitting AI brokers to conduct financial exercise with full transparency and verifiability. More importantly, decentralized ledgers be certain that agent-driven transactions are safe, permissionless, and trust-minimized, stopping manipulation or central management over digital economies.

In brief, the Post Web can not perform with out the belief layer of decentralized networks. Agents want verifiable execution environments, and Web3 supplies exactly that.

The shift is obvious for these constructing in Web3 right this moment: Your infrastructure have to be agent-friendly. Protocols that allow composability, seamless execution, and verifiable knowledge will outperform these counting on fragmented, handbook processes.In brief, the startup rule e book is evolving quickly.

3) The Infrastructure Layer: Compute, Data & DePIN

AI brokers don’t simply want good contracts; they want assets. They require computing energy, storage, and entry to decentralized knowledge networks to perform autonomously. This is the place Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) come into play.

DePIN supplies on-demand computing, storage, and bandwidth, permitting brokers to function at scale with out counting on centralized cloud suppliers. Instead of some hyperscalers like AWS or Google Cloud controlling AI compute, DePIN distributes these assets throughout permissionless networks, optimizing for price, accessibility, and resilience.

This layer ensures that AI brokers aren’t simply contributors in digital economies. They are sovereign entities able to working with out centralized gatekeepers. From decentralized GPU networks like Akash and Render to permissionless knowledge exchanges like Ocean Protocol, the infrastructure for agentic autonomy is already forming.

Startups constructing within the Post Web period should think about how their merchandise combine with decentralized compute and storage markets. AI-first functions will demand low cost, scalable, and permissionless infrastructure, and the initiatives that present it is going to turn out to be foundational to the brand new economic system.

Outside these three layers, there are extra granular parts comparable to privacy-enhancing applied sciences, modularity, middleware, scaling mechanisms, and so forth, which all broadly fall underneath a number of of those classes, which we talk about intimately in our different work.

The Internet Is Being Rewritten

For a long time, the Internet has been constructed round human interfaces, platforms, apps, and centralized gatekeepers that dictate how we work together with digital providers. That period is ending.

The Post Web stack doesn’t simply enhance Web3; it redefines it right into a world the place AI brokers are the first customers. With an agentic layer for execution, a belief layer for verifiability, and a decentralized infrastructure layer for scale and resilience, we’re witnessing the rise of an autonomous, machine-driven web.

This isn’t the subsequent model of the Web; it’s the disappearance of the Web as we all know it. The query isn’t whether or not this shift will occur however whether or not you might be constructing for it.

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