🔧 Chain-agnostic Infrastructure
In the bear market, attention has returned to the teams building the fundamentals of the decentralized web. Many of these projects are focused on fixing pervasive, ecosystem-wide problems with blockchains today (e.g. zk and privacy protocols, oracle solutions, and interoperable wallet providers). Crypto x AI projects are joining these ranks, with projects like ChainML tackling chain-agnostic computation for blockchains. What these types of projects envision is a suite of AI tools that can be deployed across L1s and L2s to enhance our ability to process, analyze, and understand the vast (and growing) amount of on-chain data.
💸 Automated Payments
Blockchain delivers a p2p economy where transactions can happen faster and with fewer obstacles than centralized counterparts. AI delivers a digital landscape where the time between prompt (question) and output (decision) is slashed. As AI starts executing those decisions on our behalf, it’s only natural that we will allow AI to spend our money. And we will ask AI to spend that money in the most cost-effective, optimized way. If we’re betting on crypto or TradFi to innovate automated, AI-powered payments first, we’d take the bet on crypto. MarginFi is on its way with Omni, an OpenAI-powered chatbot that can initiate transactions in your wallet.
📸 Owned UGC
Verifiable on-chain content isn’t just valuable for the peace of mind of content consumers; it’s also an immense opportunity for creators and communities. Today, brands rely on UGC for immense digital distribution, but the creators themselves rarely benefit as individuals. Already, generative AI is accelerating the creation of UGC. Minting generative AI as NFTs can create powerful communities around brands while simultaneously retaining IP provenance, stimulating UGC content, and incentivizing creators. Crypto x AI veteran Alethea AI has introduced ‘CharacterGPT’, enabling anyone to quickly generate an avatar with AI, mint it, and use it across web3 while verifying any additional generative outputs.
👤 Identity & Personhood
Web3 promises an owned, sovereign internet, but the growth of AI actors will complicate what it means to be “a person” online. AI is accelerating the need for verifiable identity that is owned, portable, and permanent. Not without controversy, Worldcoin is playing aggressively in this field, using blockchain to verify humanity on-chain (“Proof of Personhood”), thus creating an internet where humans and AI can coexist alongside each other and remain distinguishable.
🕹 Gaming
AI has spurred an era of prompt-based generative content creation. Across editorial, audio, and visual, novice and established artists alike are quickening their path from concept to creation. Though blockchain gaming had a rocky start this last bull market, AI-generated characters, script, and design will empower dev teams to remain lean while they continue building in the intersection of crypto and gaming.
🔐 Cybersecurity
Digital assets continue to suffer from exploits, ranging from smart contract hacks to phishing scams. Dev teams are running up against extensive backlogs of smart contract auditing firms. Individuals are relying on digital word of mouth to learn if their wallet is connected to a compromised smart contract. Projects like AnChain are filling the gap of blockchain security, deploying AI to score smart contracts and deliver end users more confidence. We can easily imagine a browser extension that serves a warning or a recommendation when we interact with a new dapp. We are also likely to see AI tools directly auditing smart contracts, flagging potential issues for a human to review, but overall accelerating the time between development and confident launch.
