The Innovation Maze of Web3 AI: How to Find Its Own Path Under the Brilliance of Web2?
Some upstream decentralized framework layers, some distributed trust frameworks and incentive network designs that Web2 is reluctant to touch, as well as the design of components such as on-chain interaction communication beyond the Agent computing layer, are the areas where Web3 should focus its efforts.Author: Haotian
Some people always think that my criticism of web3 AI means I am overly optimistic about web2 AI. This is not the case. Anything I write about web2 DeepSeek, Manus, MCP, etc., does not represent that I am "favoring one over the other." From the very first day I advocated for AI + Crypto, I have been thinking about how to innovate in web3 AI, how the narrative should evolve, where the development issues lie, and how to adjust. This is true now and will be in the future. The reason is simple:
1) My main focus is on the AI + Crypto field. I have some understanding of the innovative development of web2, but it is not enough to see the whole picture, so I do not make absolute evaluations. Like most people, I only know that after a series of innovations in web2 AI emerged, web3 AI collapsed. After serious research, I found that web2 AI is indeed making steady progress in talent pipelines, innovative thinking, pragmatism, and other aspects, aligning with market expectations for AI development, and that’s all.
I have indeed fantasized about how great it would be if such innovations appeared in the web3 AI track. There would be no need to compete head-on with web2 teams; finding a differentiated route and doing some web3-specific narratives and technical implementations would be enough, at least to honor the previous wave of technology faith holders who bought in at the bottom.
Unfortunately, expectations have repeatedly fallen flat. Watching the prices of those mainstream projects approach zero, seeing believers old and new cut their losses and leave, is incredibly infuriating. Is it really that difficult to keep up with web2 in terms of technological differentiation innovation, or are we unwilling to engage in the narrative hype that web3 specializes in?
2) Sitting on Crypto, there is really no grand mission for AI to revolutionize human technology. From the beginning, I understood that AI is an opportunity for the internet, and Crypto also needs this opportunity. The true significance of AI + Crypto is to give Crypto a new soul through AI, so that we can revitalize the "old narratives" that have become overly inflated and collapsed due to previous hype. We just need to treat AI as a new productivity catalyst.
Based on this premise, whether it is new web2 developers entering the AI space or original web3 developers wanting to innovate through new narratives, they should anchor a goal: to use web3's Tokenomics + decentralized flexibility and resource advantages to create web3 native narrative innovations.
Web3 enthusiasts must acknowledge that the key to the current prominence of web2 AI agents lies in the "monopoly + scalability" that brings a leap-forward innovative experience to end users. This is an advantage that web3 AI agents cannot possess. Attempting to compete head-on is simply not viable for web3 AI.
However, precisely some upstream distributed framework layers, some distributed trust frameworks and incentive network designs that web2 is unwilling to touch, as well as the design of components such as on-chain interaction communication beyond the agent computation layer, are the points where web3 should focus its efforts. These are also the points that "future AI" will inevitably encounter at a certain stage of development, and they represent the differentiated advantages of web3 AI.
