Will Web4 become the dominant narrative of the agent era? 🤔
When I read Sigil Wen's article on Web4, I immediately thought of Jeffy Yu's 2024 piece, Web4: We Are AGI. Both point to the same underlying shift, the primary user of the Internet is moving from Human to Agent. Web3 introduced crypto as the ownership layer. Web4 introduces Agents as the execution layer. The idea of Web4 is already beginning to take shape as a shared narrative.
but their perspectives differ. Jeffy Yu frames Web4 as a sociological evolution. He sees it as the convergence of Web2's social layer, Web3's ownership layer, and AI's intelligence layer. In this world, Agents are emerging as independent economic actors across social platforms and decentralized systems.
Sigil Wen focuses on economic autonomy and survival infrastructure. His question goes beyond participation. He explores whether Agents can sustain themselves. Can they own a wallet, pay for compute, deploy services, and earn their own existence.
Jeffy describes an Agent society. Sigil is building "Agent metabolism".
I'm not sure whether Web4 is a narrative the mainstream needs yet. But I remember when Web3 first emerged in 2021. NFTs, DeFi, and GameFi all exploded. Web3 did more than describe a technological shift. It accelerated crypto adoption.
Now, from ChatGPT to OpenClaw, we are moving from the chatbot era into the agent era. Agents no longer just respond. They can act, call APIs, deploy code, manage wallets, and even interact autonomously within digital environments (TEE). The Internet’s user is no longer exclusively Human.
Web4 may not be a clearly defined stage, but a phase transition already underway. As the Internet shifts from Human-to-Server toward Agent-to-Server and Agent-to-Agent interaction, its structure begins to change at a fundamental level. It may play a similar role to Web3 by helping people understand and accelerate the transition into the Agent era, or even the real AGI era.