Rich by Coin

The article posits that the deep integration of AI and blockchain will give rise to the next generation of on-chain economy—the “Intelligent-Sensing Economy.” Its characteristics include minimal human participation, complete trustlessness, and extreme efficiency. Its essence is a transformation from human-governed economic systems to new collaborative frameworks embedded with intelligence and possessing life-like self-evolutionary features. The three core characteristics of the next-generation on-chain economy: humans as intent providers with the system operating autonomously; constructing a thoroughly trustless security environment; and achieving unprecedented capital and operational efficiency through AI.

The core components supporting the new economy include: rapidly iterating AI large models, intent-centric AI agent networks, privacy-preserving computation technologies (e.g., ZKP and FHE), and sustainable monitoring and security systems. The role of AI shifts from an external productivity tool to an intrinsic structural component, endowing the system with intent, logic, and adaptive capabilities, thereby realizing an internal closed loop from information to action. This convergence brings not merely efficiency gains but a structural transformation, causing the economic system to exhibit life-like characteristics of perception, response, adjustment, and iteration. In 2014, before “Web3” became exclusively tied to blockchain and crypto assets, blockchain was simply blockchain itself.

Our early vision for the on-chain economy ultimately crystallized into the concept of the Smart Economy. We envisioned a decentralized network capable of autonomously managing task execution, with smart contracts serving as the key, unlocking unprecedented possibilities for economic collaboration. As we rapidly entered the third decade of the 21st century, the current Web3 ecosystem has flourished, with decentralized finance (DeFi) as its core driving force. Stablecoins have become a mainstream global settlement solution, breaking geographical barriers; payment finance (PayFi) has permeated daily life.

Regardless of the depth of public understanding, crypto assets have profoundly reshaped mass financial perception. Beneath these surface-level developments, the most profound structural advancement is the leap in financial efficiency. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI), a technology long familiar yet largely abstract, has finally materialized into daily reality over the past two years. Relying on the continuous emergence and iteration of large language models, it has deeply integrated into our work and lives.

For most people, AI is a productivity tool: designers save time, content creators automate copy polishing, and programmers significantly boost coding efficiency. However, in our view, AI is far more than a productivity booster; it represents a new paradigm of financial efficiency. Human labor always incurs costs, and human attention is inherently limited. As AI increases productivity per unit of time, it simultaneously raises the value of attention during non-working hours.

Therefore, we believe AI and blockchain are inherently compatible and should become a core component of the next-generation on-chain economy. Minimized Human Participation: In on-chain economic activities, humans will primarily serve as intent providers, with the system autonomously completing the closed loop of intent-based analysis, execution, and feedback. Taking decentralized finance (DeFi) as an example: the so-called “composability” initially required users to invest significant effort in validating strategy combinations; in the new on-chain economy, AI will autonomously handle reasoning and planning. Fully Trustless: Asset security is the foundation of usability. In the Web3 space, security issues have always loomed like the Sword of Damocles. The next-generation economy must completely eliminate user security concerns, creating a truly trustless system.

Extreme Efficiency: As mentioned earlier, every technological revolution is accompanied by a leap in efficiency. Web3 has already significantly surpassed traditional finance in transaction and settlement efficiency, but there remains immense potential in capital utilization. The deep integration of AI will elevate capital efficiency to unprecedented heights. Rapidly iterating foundational AI large models (new architectures and open-source models emerge almost daily) Intent-centric AI agents, accurately interpreting and executing user intent AI agent networks, enabling communication and collaboration between agents, forming synergistic clusters Privacy-preserving computation technologies (e.g., Zero-Knowledge Proofs ZKP, Fully Homomorphic Encryption FHE), ensuring data security without centralized trust mechanisms Foundational security components, providing maximum protection for assets (e.g., Trusted Execution Environment TEE and retrospective verification) Sustainable monitoring systems, continuously overseeing economic activities, possessing self-diagnosis and self-correction capabilities

The synergy between these elements will give rise to a truly organic, evolvable, and self-driven on-chain economy — we define this as the true Intelligent-Sensing Economy. All of this is far more than just building a faster-running system or rearranging a toolkit. The on-chain economy has never been merely a pile of technologies. More accurately, it is a collective narrative about value creation, distribution, and perception, concerning collaboration, order, and consensus. With the deep integration of AI agents, AI is no longer just an external efficiency-enhancing tool but becomes an intrinsic structural component — possessing intent, logic, preferences, and even goals.

This structural transformation is far more profound than the technological progress itself. We are transitioning from a human-activity-centric on-chain system towards a collaborative intelligence-driven network architecture. Consequently, the economy is no longer just a combination of rules and incentives; it begins to exhibit coherent, life-like characteristics: sensing external data, internal response, adjusting parameters, and reorganizing and iterating under pressure. The Intelligent-Sensing Economy we refer to does not imply the birth of emotion or consciousness, but rather the gradual refine­ment of the information-action feedback loop within the system. This means collaboration no longer relies on external orchestration but can emerge naturally from within the system. This marks a directional shift in the infrastructure of human civilization — from simply “governing the economy” to “embedding intelligence into the economy.” We often discuss the on-chain economy from the perspectives of structural design and financial efficiency, but perhaps what truly deserves rethinking is: when a system possesses the ability for continuous self-learning, self-adaptation, and self-coordination, should we still simply define it as an “economy”? Or is it evolving into a new form of life?