Web3 wasn’t designed for people at scale; it was constructed for machines. Its complexity has restricted its adoption, however the “Publish Internet” stack is taking form with AI brokers rising as autonomous financial actors.
Sensible contracts, decentralized networks, and verifiable computation will stay. However 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 now have been beta-testing decentralized programs and functions. Whereas thousands and thousands of individuals interact with blockchain networks, DeFi protocols, and decentralized functions (dApps), the truth is that Web3 stays vastly underutilized.
Regardless of roughly 10% of the world allegedly proudly owning crypto, solely a fraction of those holders actively use decentralized functions as an actual different to Web2 or centralized platforms. This disconnect isn’t resulting from an absence of functionality in Web3 expertise, however reasonably 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 large of Web3 performance is waking up. The “Publish Internet” — a time period we coined at Outlier Ventures — creates a world the place brokers execute duties, handle belongings, and transact on our behalf. Each part of the Web3 stack will likely be repurposed. As soon as hindered by complexity, the infrastructure constructed for a decentralized world is now ideally suited to an web optimized for machines.
AI brokers won’t simply use Web3. They’ll unlock all of its potential.
The Big 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 observe, Web3 has revolutionized back-end programs. As but, its expertise stays too advanced for the common person to deal with. Sensible contracts, self-custody, and bridging throughout chains, require time, effort, and technical understanding that most individuals merely don’t have.
That is the place AI brokers change every thing. Not like people, brokers thrive in complexity. They’ll course of huge quantities of data, automate intricate workflows, and function seamlessly throughout decentralized networks. Whereas human customers battle with onboarding, brokers can instantly combine with sensible 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 at all times meant to.
The Publish Internet Tech Stack: Constructed for Machines
Web3 has spent the previous decade constructing decentralized infrastructure with out contemplating AI. With the rise of autonomous AI brokers, our fascinated by this stack should essentially change.
Within the Publish Internet, the place AI brokers exchange people as major customers, the stack undergoes two crucial transformations:
- Optimizing the current Web3 stack for AI brokers – Upgrading decentralized infrastructure to assist machine-driven transactions, intent execution, and autonomous coordination.
- Constructing 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 Publish Internet, we’ve examined this evolution in better element. Put merely,, the Publish Internet stack consists of three core layers, every important for enabling an web optimized for machines.
1) The Agentic Layer: AI because the New Interface
Within the Publish Internet, 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. Customers will specific intent-based, high-level targets and goals, corresponding to investing in belongings, reserving journey, or negotiating contracts, and brokers will deal with the remaining.
Sensible wallets will evolve into sovereign id hubs, storing private information, belongings, and permissions, permitting brokers to behave with precision. This shift signifies that as an alternative 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 programs.
The agentic layer is the most important green-field alternative for daring founders who’ve the need and skill to mix probabilistic AI capabilities with deterministic sensible contracts and DLT. There’s a want for marketplaces, coordination layers, frameworks, and extra, all of which should be developed and improved.
2) The Belief Layer: Sensible Contracts & DLT because the Spine
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. That is the place blockchain and sensible contracts grow to be crucial.
In the present day’s AI fashions function on probabilistic logic. Primarily based on coaching information, they predict the subsequent most probably end result. Nonetheless, financial transactions require certainty and enforceability: a financial institution switch, authorized contract, or commerce have to be executed with absolute finality.
Sensible contracts present this lacking piece. They provide immutable, self-executing agreements, permitting AI brokers to conduct financial exercise with full transparency and verifiability. Extra importantly, decentralized ledgers be sure that agent-driven transactions are safe, permissionless, and trust-minimized, stopping manipulation or central management over digital economies.
In brief, the Publish Internet can not operate with out the belief layer of decentralized networks. Brokers want verifiable execution environments, and Web3 supplies exactly that.
The shift is evident for these constructing in Web3 at present: Your infrastructure have to be agent-friendly. Protocols that allow composability, seamless execution, and verifiable information will outperform these counting on fragmented, guide processes.In brief, the startup rule ebook is evolving quickly.
3) The Infrastructure Layer: Compute, Knowledge & DePIN
AI brokers don’t simply want sensible contracts; they want assets. They require computing energy, storage, and entry to decentralized information networks to operate autonomously. That is the place Decentralized Bodily 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. As a substitute 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 members in digital economies. They’re sovereign entities able to working with out centralized gatekeepers. From decentralized GPU networks like Akash and Render to permissionless information exchanges like Ocean Protocol, the infrastructure for agentic autonomy is already forming.
Startups constructing within the Publish Internet period should contemplate 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’ll grow to be foundational to the brand new financial system.
Exterior these three layers, there are extra granular parts corresponding to privacy-enhancing applied sciences, modularity, middleware, scaling mechanisms, and so forth, which all broadly fall beneath a number of of those classes, which we focus on intimately in our different work.
The Web Is Being Rewritten
For many years, the Web has been constructed round human interfaces, platforms, apps, and centralized gatekeepers that dictate how we work together with digital companies. That period is ending.
The Publish Internet 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 Internet; it’s the disappearance of the Internet as we all know it. The query isn’t whether or not this shift will occur however whether or not you’re constructing for it.