Ledger's AI Security Roadmap Aims to Maintain Human Control

Ledger, a prominent hardware crypto wallet manufacturer, has unveiled a security roadmap for the era of AI agents.

Ledger's thesis: the rise of autonomous AI agents creates a major new security risk - software can be manipulated, spoofed, or hijacked, especially when agents are given access to money, identity, and sensitive data. With this roadmap, the company wants to ensure that humans remain in control.

To make this work, the roadmap introduces a phased architecture built around hardware-based trust. First, AI agents will receive hardware-linked identities, making them verifiable and harder to spoof compared to software-only credentials. Next, users can define strict permissions and policies, such as spending limits or approved addresses, that are enforced directly in hardware, not software. Finally, Ledger plans a “proof of human” layer to ensure that each agent is tied to a real, unique person, reducing bots and fake accounts.

Overall, the roadmap represents a pivot from securing crypto assets to securing identity, agency, and control in an AI-driven world, with hardware acting as the final safeguard to keep humans in charge of increasingly autonomous systems.

Ledger's 2026 AI Security Roadmap | AI Agent Stack

Ledger is launching a comprehensive security stack for AI Agents throughout 2026, bringing hardware-anchored security to the agentic economy.

https://www.ledger.com

Web3 + AI Investment & Funding News

Nava Closes $8.3M Seed Round to Inspect Agentic Transactions

Nava AI raised $8.3M to to make AI-powered financial agents safe enough to handle real money, addressing one of the biggest barriers to “agentic commerce.”

We're Nava, and today we’re coming out of stealth with an $8.3M seed round from Polychain Capital, Archetype, Hack VC, FalconX, and Seed Club / Seed Club Ventures to build the trust infrastructure the agent economy is missing.

Nava AI was cofounded by Vyas Krishnan and Brianna Montgomery, who both previously worked at Eigen Labs. Meanwhile, the founder of EigenLayer, Sreeram Kannan, is one of Nava AI's financial backers.

Nava’s specific approach to reining in rogue behavior by AI agents is the creation of an escrow service that holds on to funds until an agent proposes a transaction. Once the agent does, Nava uses a verification framework to determine whether the outcome of an agent’s transaction will match the user’s intent. If the transaction passes the check, the transaction is executed. If not, the funds remain in escrow. 

The system also records the reasoning behind each decision on-chain, creating a transparent and auditable history that both humans and other AI agents can reference. This positions Nava as a trust layer for autonomous financial activity, not just a tool.

Nava raises $8.3 million in seed funding to keep AI financial agents from going off the rails | Fortune

The AI and blockchain startup introduces an escrow system to the burgeoning world of agentic commerce.

https://fortune.com

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

AI-Assisted Governance Has Failed. What to Do Next?

Ric Shreves, president of Decentralized Cooperation Foundation (DCF), has published an extensive analysis of the first wave of AI-powered initiatives in blockchain governance. Although they were tackling genuine problems, most of these early experiments have failed. Still, their trajectory offers valuable lessons that should shape how we move forward. Here's what it's all about.

AI-assisted governance tools in crypto were supposed to solve a basic but critical issue: almost nobody participates in DAO voting. In many cases, fewer than 10–20% of token holders vote, while a tiny minority controls most of the power, making governance both fragile and easy to attack. AI tools emerged as a way to reduce the effort required by summarizing proposals, tracking delegates, and even voting automatically on behalf of users.

Shreves has examined a number of ambitious platforms in the space, including x23.ai, Tally, Event Horizon, Polkassembly, and MetaDAO. Most of them collapsed between 2025 and 2026, mainly because governance tooling behaves like a public good: it’s useful to everyone, but very hard to charge for. DAOs tend to rely on grants rather than sustainable payments, which makes funding inconsistent and politically driven.

Shreves highlights another reason for their failure, which may surprise some of you: it turns out that "Gensler and Biden were just better for crypto."

Under the 2022–2024 Gensler-era SEC, DAOs faced significant legal uncertainty and invested in governance infrastructure partly as risk management against enforcement threats. The Trump administration's 2025 deregulatory posture eliminated that urgency. When the compliance imperative evaporates, so does one of the primary demand drivers for governance tooling.

Is it possible that crypto's current fixation on "accelerationism" is pulling it away from its core ideals - decentralization, democratization, and plurality of voices? I'll leave that question with you. Read the full article and share your thoughts in comments.

Lessons Learned from the First Wave of Experiments with AI in Governance

Author: Ric Shreves Date: 14 Apr 2026 Something important has quietly broken in the world of decentralized governance. The early wave of AI-assisted governance tooling, designed to fix the participation crisis inside blockchain-based organizations, largely collapsed.

https://www.linkedin.com

Zama's Rand Hindi: Programmable Compliance to Unlock $120T Institutional Capital

In this interview for DL Research, Zama's Rand Hindi argues that the biggest barrier preventing institutional capital from moving on-chain is not technology, but compliance.

Traditional finance, worth roughly $120T, has avoided public blockchains because they force a trade-off between transparency and privacy. Institutions cannot expose sensitive data like positions or trades, but fully private systems lack the openness and interoperability they need.

The proposed solution is “programmable compliance”: embedding regulatory rules directly into smart contracts while keeping data private. Using technologies like fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), transactions can remain encrypted while still being auditable under specific conditions. This allows regulators to access necessary information without exposing everything publicly, effectively reconciling privacy with oversight.

[...] the asset management industry is a $120 trillion market. Stablecoins attract a lot of attention, but asset classes like real estate and private credit far surpass them in size. When those assets go on-chain, the volume needing encryption will be enormous. 

The shift is already beginning, with large-scale tokenization efforts (e.g., tens of billions in real-world assets) signalling movement from experimentation to real deployment. If successful, this infrastructure could unlock massive flows of institutional capital into crypto.

The partnership with Apex Group Ltd to tokenise $100 billion via the T-Rex protocol is the turning point. It proves that the RWA migration isn't a future possibility; it’s happening now, and it requires Zama’s confidentiality layer to scale. We are moving from 'Proof of Concept' to 'Proof of Volume.’

The $120 trillion unlock: Why programmable compliance is the final frontier for onchain institutional capital

Privacy is no longer a barrier to entry. Zama CEO Dr. Rand Hindi reveals how Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is bridging the gap between public transparency and institutional mandates, starting with a $100 billion tokenisation pipeline. For years, the move to public blockchains has been stalled by a binary choice: total transparency or total isolation.

https://www.dlnews.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

The Advent of Agentic Companies

Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer and EigenCloud, believes that agentic companies will be the next trillion-dollar bet. But why haven't we witnessed this new kind of software-only firm yet?

The key bottleneck is not intelligence, but rights.

At the center of every entrepreneurial endeavor lies the ability to own property. Humans (living in fairly democratic and capitalist countries) dispose of an evolved legislative and judicial system that guarantees property rights - something that agents are still lacking.

A common assumption is that the main thing holding agents back is capability. I do not think that is the whole story. Even if models continue to improve rapidly, the bigger bottleneck is that agents do not have standing in the systems that matter most. Humans can own property, sign agreements, take liabilities, and organize companies. Agents, by default, cannot. Without those capabilities, they remain extensions of human operators rather than economic actors in their own right.

Though, if you think that agents would wait for the legislation to catch up, you're gravely mistaken. In fact, this is where blockchain comes into play.

A blockchain already allows a program to hold and administer assets according to rules. That is, in effect, a mechanism by which software can own property and exercise constrained control. Smart contracts are the earliest and clearest example of this.

All we need to allow an agent to own rights and property is to create mechanisms that guarantee the agent's identity. As I've written repeatedly here, this is what Ethereum Foundation's ERC-8004 standard is all about:

Ethereum Bets Heavily on AI with New dAI Team

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Oct 2, 2025

The Ethereum Foundation sets up a new dAI team, proposes the Trustless Agents standard, and competes to accommodate the emerging agentic economy.

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We are on the verge of having agents establish and run companies, sign contracts, raise funds, and ship products. A new generation of corporations is about to be born.

AI democratizes the creation of software. AI plus crypto democratizes the creation of software companies.

I urge you to listen to Kannan's full lecture at Digital Asset Summit 2026 to learn more.

Agentic Security and Privacy Redefined

Illia Polosukhin was among the co-authors of the landmark paper "Attention is all you need," which introduced the then-novel Transformer architecture for AI models and ultimately laid the groundwork for the generative AI revolution we’re experiencing today. He left Google to create NEAR AI and, subsequently, NEAR Protocol.

It was in 2017 when Polosukhin envisioned that blockchains and AI would converge. He knew that AI needs resources like data and compute and that all you need for setting up a global marketplace to crowdsource them is a single smart contract. He still believes that one day AI will replace all operating systems and apps to become our interface to computers and code, and blockchain will work in the background.

What blockchains provide in that scenario is invaluable, because they can serve as the layer of truth and trust, offering a global registry of identities, along with marketplaces, payment methods, and all of that delivered with upgradeability.

Polosukhin joined the Bankless podcast to discuss IronClaw - a more secure and private version of the popular agent framework OpenClaw. But why do we need more privacy and security when interacting with agents?

Polosukhin outlines two main reasons:

1. Agents are not as useful today as we want them to be because we don't give them enough context and information. Meanwhile, we withhold context because we're afraid of misuse.

2. Another problem when communicating with agents is privacy - we cannot trust them to keep our sensitive data, passwords, and private keys safe.

People are right to worry. The reality that many users don't fully grasp is that with OpenClaw, every piece of information they provide is sent to the inference partner working in the background, whether that's Anthropic, OpenAI, or someone else.

So somewhere in Anthropic's and OpenAI's logs, they have everybody's access keys, API keys, passwords to gmail, notion, etc.

In contrast, with IronClaw, all different tools are sandboxed in isolated environments, and all credentials and private keys are fully encrypted and locked in a vault, with checks on how the agent uses them. The keys never touch an LLM, even if a centralized inference provider is used. In case of agents creating products themselves, they'll be running inside a VM and their effect will be under control.

The focus of NEAR AI over the past year has been on private AI - where neither NEAR AI, nor the model provider or the hardware provider can access what the user is doing with it.

Listen to the entire conversation to find out more.

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Netflix Launches VOID AI with INSAIT Bulgaria

Streaming behemoth Netflix just open-sourced VOID (Video Object and Interaction Deletion) - an AI tool that erases objects from video and models how the remaining scene should physically behave after the object is gone.

Unlike standard tools that simply “fill in” the removed areas, VOID understands how objects interact. For example, if a person holding an item is removed, the model simulates how the object would naturally fall or move, as if the scene had originally been filmed without the person.

What's more important for me to highlight here is that the research behind VOID was conducted in cooperation with Bulgaria's INSAIT - Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology.

VOID was chosen 64.8% of the time in tests against six rivals, including Runway, the leading commercial alternative, which managed just 18.4%. It is not clear yet whether Netflix would incorporate the model in production pipelines, but using it to automate labor-intensive post-production tasks can save the companies significant resources.

Netflix Launches VOID AI That Rewrites Video Scenes After Filming

Netflix Just Open-Sourced an AI tool that beats a billion-dollar startup's VFX product. ears have called Netflix's $20 billion budget a bottomless pit for years.

https://www.forbes.com

The Numerous Masks of Sam Altman: One of the Most Powerful Men on Earth

The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spent over a year investigating OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, to discover the reasons behind Altman’s dismissal by the company’s board, and his subsequent reinstatement following the highly public fallout.

The article is a fascinating read that examines Altman's professional and personal life in depth and his path from co-founding OpenAI as a non-profit to the present day - from the gross and often vicious slander against him to his tendencies to lie and exaggerate and his ties with Middle Eastern princes who order murders of journalists.

If we have to describe Altman with a single word, it surely will be 'controversial.' But if I have to characterize my thoughts after reading this piece, the word will be 'confused.'

'Confused' about how the world might believe this person after numerous accounts of deceit, how we trust him to manage one of the most consequential companies in human history, and how people continue to glorify Silicon Valley bullies, liars, and narcissists just because they claim to work "for the common good."

In this newsletter, I have often cited Altman for his contentious, to put it mildly, stands on AI regulation - something that the article outlines perfectly:

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023, he proposed a new federal agency to oversee advanced A.I. models. [...] But, as Altman publicly welcomed regulation, he quietly lobbied against it. In 2022 and 2023, according to Time, OpenAI successfully pressed to dilute a European Union effort that would have subjected large A.I. companies to more oversight. In 2024, a bill was introduced in the California state legislature mandating safety testing for A.I. models. Its provisions included measures resembling the ones that Altman had advocated for in his congressional testimony. OpenAI publicly opposed the bill but in private began issuing threats. "I would say that over the course of the year, we saw increasingly cunning, deceptive behavior from OpenAI," a legislative aide told us.

Some of you may say that CEOs at such scale need to shift swiftly to be able to stir whole industries. And yes, the technology world, and AI in particular, is extremely fast-paced, and founders like Altman need to be able to adapt to survive. Nobody debates that.

But to found an organization with the explicit mission of ensuring safety and benefitting all of humanity and then gradually abandon every safety commitment you have ever made is next-level hypocrisy, to say the least.

Make sure to read the full story here:

Sam Altman May Control Our Future-Can He Be Trusted?

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI, Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz write.

https://t.co

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Coinbase Joins The Linux Foundation to Launch x402 Foundation

The Linux Foundation has announced the creation of the x402 Foundation to support and govern the x402 protocol - the open standard designed by Coinbase to enable seamless internet-native payments.

The x402 protocol allows software systems and AI agents to make direct payments over the web using mechanisms similar to HTTP. Learn more about it below:

The Stellar Leap of Coinbase's x402

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Oct 29, 2025

The Web3 + AI Inquiry digs into the burning questions steering dAI and the open machine economy. Today, we're asking: what's all the buzz about x402?

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The goal of the new foundation is to provide neutral governance, encourage industry collaboration, and ensure interoperability across platforms. By standardizing how machine-to-machine transactions work, the initiative aims to unlock new use cases where AI agents can autonomously pay for APIs, data, or digital services in real time.

The initiative reflects a broader effort to build foundational infrastructure for a future where autonomous systems participate in the digital economy, positioning x402 as a potential backbone for automated, internet-scale commerce.

Membership will be comprised of participants from multiple verticals, with initial intent and support being expressed by Adyen, Amazon Web Services (AWS), American Express, ampersend.ai, Base Chain, Circle, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Fiserv Merchant Solutions, Google, 카카오페이 (kakaopay), Mastercard, Merit Systems, Microsoft, Polygon Labs, PPRO, Shopify, Sierra, Solana Foundation, Stripe, thirdweb, and Visa.

Linux Foundation is Launching the x402 Foundation and Welcoming the Contribution of the x402 Protocol

Linux Foundation is Launching the x402 Foundation and Welcoming the Contribution of the x402 Protocol

https://www.linuxfoundation.org

Blockchain Intelligence Joins Forces with AI Agents

Chainalysis, the leader in blockchain intelligence services, has introduced natural-language AI agents into its blockchain investigation platform, marking a shift toward more accessible and automated crypto analysis.

The new feature allows users to create and run investigations simply by describing what they need in plain language, rather than relying on specialized technical skills or complex query tools. These AI agents are built on data from millions of past investigations and can automatically identify relevant transactions, suggest analytical steps, and generate structured insights.

They are designed not as basic chatbots but as full investigative tools that support audit trails and evidentiary standards, making them suitable for compliance, law enforcement, and financial institutions.

The broader goal is to lower the barrier to blockchain intelligence, enabling non-experts, along with enterprise clients and law enforcement, to perform complex investigations and build custom workflows tailored to their needs.

Chainalysis adds 'natural language' AI agents to its blockchain investigation platform

CEO Jonathan Levin says it marks a "really important moment" for making such analysis more accessible as the crypto industry grows with non-native entrants.

https://www.coindesk.com

This development reflects a wider industry shift toward AI-driven analytics - just days before Chainalysis's announcement, their competitor TRM Labs also launched a program introducing AI agents into its crypto investigation platform.

These agents are integrated into TRM’s existing forensic tools and allow investigators, law enforcement, and compliance teams to conduct complex blockchain analysis using simple, natural-language prompts instead of technical queries.

The AI agents can automatically trace the flow of funds, identify suspicious patterns, and translate user requests into actionable investigative steps, significantly speeding up what is typically a time-intensive process.

These developments are particularly important as criminals are increasingly using AI themselves to enhance scams and evasion tactics, and as crypto-related crime has grown in scale, complexity, and sophistication.

According to TRM’s 2026 Crypto Crime Report, AI-enabled scam activity increased by roughly 500% in 2025 - fraud that once required significant human coordination now scales automatically, adapts on the fly, and disperses proceeds before investigators can respond.

AI agents to help investigators unearth crypto criminals, according to new TRM program

TRM Labs has added an AI agent to the services the blockchain analytics firm offers law enforcement agencies.

https://www.coindesk.com

Trust Wallet Unveils Agent Kit to Power Agentic, But Self-Custody Finance

Trust Wallet, one of the largest self-custody crypto wallets, has launched the Agent Kit - a new developer toolkit designed to enable AI agents to perform real cryptocurrency transactions rather than just analyze or suggest them. The tool allows AI systems to execute actions like swaps, transfers, and automated trading strategies across more than 25 blockchains, marking a shift from AI as an assistant to AI as an active participant in financial activity.

A key feature of the Agent Kit is its focus on user control and self-custody. It offers two operating models: the first allows AI agents to run autonomously within predefined rules using a dedicated wallet.

The second - unique in the industry - connects an AI agent directly to a user’s existing Trust Wallet through WalletConnect, where agents propose transactions that users approve before execution. Custody always remains with the user, ensuring safety and control.

This ensures that users retain ownership of their assets while still benefiting from automation.

The launch follows the recent opening of Trust Wallet’s Developer Portal, which allowed AI agents read-only access to data across more than 100 chains. While the Developer Portal provided context for understanding users’ crypto positions, the Agent Kit adds a wallet-connected layer, enabling user-directed actions and automated workflows.

Overall, the launch positions Trust Wallet as infrastructure for AI-driven, self-custody finance, reflecting a broader trend toward “agentic” economies where autonomous systems can manage and move assets under human-defined constraints.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Templar Performs Largest Decentralized LLM Pre-Training Run in History

Covenant AI / Templar, subnet 3 of the Opentensor Foundation / Bittensor decentralized AI ecosystem, has recently released the largest foundation model pre-trained in a completely decentralized and permissionless manner.

Covenant-72B is a 72-billion-parameter large language model (LLM) trained across 70+ contributors using standard hardware on open internet infrastructure.

COVENANT-72B - an LLM produced by the largest collaborative globally distributed pre-training run (in terms of both compute and model scale), which simultaneously allowed open, permissionless participation supported by a live blockchain protocol.

The model achieved a 67.1 MMLU score (popular benchmark for evaluating LLMs), thus ranking in the same performance range as Meta’s LLaMA 2 70B.

Covenant-72B: Pre-Training a 72B LLM with Trustless Peers Over-the-Internet

Recently, there has been increased interest in globally distributed training, which has the promise to both reduce training costs and democratize participation in building large-scale foundation models. However, existing models trained in a globally distributed manner are relatively small in scale and have only been trained with whitelisted participants.

https://arxiv.org

Why is this so important? There are several noteworthy reasons:

1. Decentralized AI training at a scale is possible: A couple of years ago, training an LLM in a decentralized fashion, using a blockchain-coordinated network of nodes, was deemed not just exorbitantly expensive and energy intensive, but simply impossible. Now, Templar proves it's doable.

2. Decentralized AI training is a viable alternative to OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta: Currently, the conversation around AI revolves predominantly around the ability of major labs to borrow billions of dollars to build data centers, while they haven't yet generated any profit from the technology they're building. It turns out there's an alternative nobody is talking about.

Covenant-72B is trained by a network of nodes using commodity hardware. No billion-dollar data centers and no tech behemoths in sight. As 0xSammy wrote:

Frontier model pre-training is increasingly concentrated

The compute required for state-of-the-art training doubles every 6 to 10 months, pricing out anyone but the major labs: OpenAI, Google, Meta, and a handful of others with billion-dollar GPU budgets

Templar is emerging as one of the most credible challenges to that concentration and they’ve just completed the largest decentralized pre-training run, EVER

It's no wonder that Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, has stated that Covenant-72B is challenging the political economy of AI:

Distributed training is a technique that can change the political economy of AI by shifting the people at the frontier from monolithic ‘compute singletons’ (like labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, and clouds like Google) to a larger federated collective.

[Decentralized training] is an important technology to track, and I could imagine a world where on-device AI features a lot of models developed via distributed training techniques, while on-cloud AI mostly runs on proprietary models trained on huge amounts of compute.

ImportAI 449: LLMs training other LLMs; 72B distributed training run; computer vision is harder than generative text

Will AI cause a political interregnum

https://importai.substack.com

3. Building AI is not just for the tech giants: Recently, the AI race has made it increasingly difficult for independent researchers and smaller labs to access the computing power they need. Cloud services and specialized AI data centers have become so expensive that only billion-dollar corporations can realistically afford them. The result? Progress in AI research and development is now concentrated in the hands of just a handful of companies.

The only meaningful efforts to democratize AI development are currently emerging from the crypto space. Covenant-72B was trained in a completely permissionless and transparent way, where anyone interested could have joined:

72B parameters. ~1.1T tokens. Commodity internet. No centralized cluster. No whitelist. Anyone with GPUs could join or leave freely.

4. Participation generates income: Think of Templar, and Bittensor as a whole, as a crowdsourcing platform, but instead of micro donations, it collects computing resources. It allows anyone possessing heavy-duty graphics cards (GPUs) to contribute their computing power to help train a shared, global AI model. Yet, here, contributors gain direct monetary remuneration for a job well done.

   That means that anyone with a gaming computer, anywhere on the planet Earth, can lend their idle computing resources and earn passive income. An income that in many parts of the world, has the potential to be truly life-changing.

5. Performance doesn't have to suffer: Covenant-72B delivers a performance competitive with models trained in centralized data centers - a 67.1 MMLU score, close to the one reached by Meta’s LLaMA 2 70B.

   And yes, I should emphasize that Covenant-72B is a bit outdated compared to the models major labs are releasing these days:

   The model itself is basically a standard LLM that you would’ve been pleased to play with in 2023 or 2024, though might be a bit old fashioned in 2026.

   However, what's particularly impressive and exciting about Covenant-72B is the fact that a distributed network of peers, each running 8×B200 GPUs, has trained a model that performs similarly to the one trained by the seventh* richest company in the world (*at the time of writing).

6. Covenant-72B is completely open-source: Instead of locking the model behind a paid API wall, Templar released all the model weights and checkpoints under an open-source Apache 2.0 license for anyone to use.

   That's just another piece of evidence that the Web3 space offers fertile ground for AI experimentation.

Tether AI Enables AI Training and Inference on Smartphones

QVAC, the AI-focused arm of stablecoin issuer Tether.io, launched a new version of its QVAC Fabric, marking a shift from centralized, cloud-based AI to local, on-device AI development. Instead of relying on expensive data centers, the framework allows developers to run, train, and fine-tune large language models directly on everyday hardware like laptops, consumer GPUs, and even smartphones.

QVAC Fabric LLM challenges a long-standing assumption at the heart of modern artificial intelligence: that training and customizing powerful models must be confined to large, centralized data centers. QVAC Fabric LLM is built around a local-first, privacy-first philosophy, enabling individuals and organizations to fine-tune large language models directly on their own devices, using the hardware they already trust and control.

How was that possible? The key breakthrough is bringing fine-tuning, especially via efficient methods like LoRA, to edge devices, making AI personalization far more accessible. Tasks that once required high-end infrastructure can now be done locally, often with just a few commands.

This approach works across all major platforms (mobile and desktop), enabling a truly cross-platform, decentralized AI ecosystem, and eliminates cloud dependency.

QVAC Fabric LLM represents a turning point by democratizing AI development and personalization, shifting power from big tech and data centers to individuals and their own devices. And most importantly, this progress doesn’t come at the expense of performance:

Importantly, broader hardware access does not come at the cost of model quality. Models trained using QVAC Fabric LLM were evaluated against industry-standard benchmarks. Across multiple benchmarks, including biomedical accuracy tasks, performance was on par with the industry standard (PyTorch) and, in some cases, marginally better. In other evaluations, results were effectively equivalent, demonstrating that hardware-agnostic, on-device fine-tuning can match established training standards.

QVAC Fabric LLM Marks a Turning Point in AI Personalization, Bringing Fine-Tuning From Data Centers to Everyday Devices - Tether.io

Tether Data recently launched QVAC Fabric LLM, a new AI framework that challenges a long-standing assumption at the heart of modern artificial intelligence: that training and customizing powerful models must be confined to large, centralized data centers. QVAC Fabric LLM is built around a local-first, privacy-first philosophy, enabling individuals and organizations to fine-tune large language [...]

https://tether.io

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

MoonPay Launches Unified & Secure Interface for Agentic Payments

MoonPay has launched Open Wallet Standard (OWS) - a new open-source wallet standard aimed at enabling AI agents to independently manage and move money across blockchain networks.

Today we're open-sourcing the Open Wallet Standard (OWS), a secure, local-first protocol that gives AI agents and developer tools a single way to store keys, manage wallets, and sign transactions across every major blockchain.

One vault, one interface, every chain.

The initiative is designed to solve a growing problem in the AI and crypto space: fragmentation, where each application requires its own wallet setup and key management system. By introducing a unified framework, MoonPay allows developers to equip AI systems with a single wallet that can operate across multiple environments.

The agentic payments stack has arrived. For the first time -- via x402, MPP, and A2A — AI agents can pay for things — APIs, compute, data — without a human in the loop.

But there's a gap in the stack that nobody's addressed. Every one of these protocols assumes your agent already has a wallet.

x402 needs a signed EIP-3009 authorization. MPP needs a signed payment from a funded account. They define how agents pay. None of them define where the private key lives, how it's stored, how it's protected, or how two different tools share access to the same wallet.

The wallet standard is built with a strong focus on security. Private keys are stored in encrypted vaults, and transaction signing happens outside the AI’s core runtime to reduce risk.

The idea is simple: one encrypted vault on your machine, one interface for every chain, and a security model where the private key is never exposed to the agent, the LLM, or any parent process.

Because the project is open-source and modular, developers can adapt it to different use cases, integrating storage, signing, and blockchain connectivity as needed.

The broader goal is to support the emergence of an “agent economy,” where AI systems are not just tools but active participants that can transact, pay for services, and interact financially without constant human input.

A couple of weeks ago, MoonPay also introduced a new feature that combines AI-driven crypto agents with hardware security from hardware wallets Ledger, aiming to address one of the biggest risks in automated crypto systems: exposure of private keys.

The system allows AI agents to execute tasks like trading, rebalancing portfolios, and moving assets across blockchains, but removes the need to hand over full control of wallet keys. Instead, every transaction generated by the AI must be manually verified and signed on a physical Ledger device, ensuring that private keys never leave secure hardware.

MoonPay adds Ledger-secured AI crypto agents to deal with wallet key risks

The new feature allows users to verify and sign every transaction generated by an AI agent using a Ledger hardware device, ensuring private keys never leave the hardware signer.

https://www.coindesk.com

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

Will AI Agents Opt for Card Payment Rails or Blockchain?

Visa and Coinbase are both preparing for a future where AI agents - not humans - carry out most online transactions, but they are taking fundamentally different approaches to how that future internet will function. And when I refer to Visa and Coinbase, I don’t just mean the companies themselves; I’m using them as shorthand for a broader rivalry between incumbent payment networks and the crypto ecosystem.

The next major evolution of the internet will be driven by autonomous AI agents making payments continuously in the background, often without direct human involvement. This shift is expected to eliminate traditional checkout processes entirely, replacing them with machine-to-machine transactions happening at high speed and scale.

Visa is adapting its existing financial infrastructure to support this change. Its strategy is to extend traditional payment rails, like cards and stablecoin integrations, into a system where AI agents can transact within a regulated, familiar framework. In this vision, the future internet still resembles today’s financial system, but upgraded to handle automated, real-time payments between machines. Yet, incumbents like Visa cannot accommodate API calls that cost $0.002 when their minimum processing fee on a single transaction is around $0.30.

Coinbase, on the other hand, is building toward a more crypto-native model. It sees blockchain wallets as the natural financial tool for AI agents, mainly because these agents cannot meet traditional banking requirements like identity verification. Crypto wallets, which only require private keys, allow agents to transact freely without relying on banks or centralized intermediaries.

The result is a split between two competing visions of the “agent economy.” Visa is effectively trying to evolve the current system into one that supports AI-driven commerce, while Coinbase is pushing for a new, decentralized financial layer where agents operate independently using crypto.

Theirs is a broader competition over what the underlying infrastructure of the future internet will look like - an upgraded version of today’s system, or an entirely new one built around blockchain.

Why crypto bulls think AI agents will make stablecoins the default payment layer

The next trillion-dollar payments network won't have a checkout page. No card number, no CVV, no human at the keyboard. Just machines paying machines, thousands of times a second, for fractions of a cent.

https://www.coindesk.com

Is Stripe's MPP a Turning Point for Micropayments?

Since I mentioned micropayments and building on the topics I discussed in yesterday's edition of the newsletter, I wanted to share this op-ed by Meng Liu, Senior Analyst at Forrester. In it, Meng argues that Stripe and Paradigm's MPP may be a gamechanger for micropayments. Here's why.

For decades, micropayments struggled not due to technology but because people hesitate over small charges, abandon checkouts, and mentally weigh every transaction. MPP changes this by shifting payments from humans to AI agents, which can execute transactions automatically as part of completing a task, without friction or decision-making overhead.

The protocol is designed specifically for machine-to-machine payments, where paying becomes a seamless, programmatic step rather than a conscious action. This eliminates the “mental transaction cost” that made small payments impractical and unlocks use cases like paying per API call, data access, or digital service in real time.

Importantly, MPP is not a new payment network but a coordination layer that works across existing infrastructure - traditional rails, wallets, and crypto - making it easier to adopt without replacing current systems.

The broader implication is that AI agents could finally make micropayments viable at scale, turning them from a long-standing failed idea into a foundational part of an emerging machine-driven internet economy.

Do you agree with this take? Let me know in comments.

Why Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol Signals A Turning Point For Micropayments

On March 18, 2026, Stripe and Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) alongside the Tempo Mainnet - a payments-focused blockchain codeveloped with Paradigm. But one design principle separates it from everything above: MPP is built for agents to pay, not humans.

https://www.forrester.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

It's been a while since I last wrote here, because I've been quite busy bringing another venture to life. It's a great pleasure to present to you Web3 Owners Club - a crypto education hub designed to cater to absolute newcomers and facilitate their onboarding into Web3. With it, my goal is to share the knowledge, both in English and in Bulgarian, and help beginners on their way to co-owning the emerging agentic economy. I invite you to check it out:

Web3 Owners Club

Web3 Owners Club is your go-to educational hub to learn crypto and blockchain. Master the fundamentals to co-own the emerging digital and agentic economy.

https://www.web3owners.club

In terms of Web3 + AI, today's edition serves up a rich mix of news on on Tempo, Paradigm, World, OpenAI, and more.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

What's Hot in Web3 + AI?

Tempo Goes Live to Power Machine-to-Machine Commerce

The long-awaited Tempo blockchain, incubated by payments giant Stripe and venture firm Paradigm, is finally live. It's purpose-built for stablecoin payments and aims to support a new kind of digital economy driven by AI agents.

A central idea behind the project is enabling autonomous AI systems to pay for services on their own. Tempo introduces a system called the Machine Payments Protocol, which allows an AI agent to open a payment session with a predefined spending limit and then continuously make small transactions as it consumes resources like data or computing power. These micropayments are later bundled together and settled on-chain, reducing congestion and improving scalability.

The broader vision is to support an emerging “agent economy,” where software programs can independently buy and sell services without human intervention. This reflects a growing trend in the crypto industry to combine blockchain infrastructure with AI capabilities, particularly for automating economic activity online.

Tempo is entering the market with strong backing from major investors and partnerships with well-known tech and payments companies, such as Anthropic, DoorDash, Mastercard, Nubank, OpenAI, Ramp, Revolut, Shopify and Standard Chartered. Overall, the launch positions Tempo as infrastructure not just for stablecoin transfers, but for machine-to-machine commerce, where AI systems could become active economic participants.

Tempo's stablecoin blockchain goes live with support for 'AI agent' transactions

Tempo launches its blockchain. It comes with tooling for AI agent payments.

https://www.dlnews.com

Meanwhile, Paradigm announced a new $1.5B fund, expanding its scope to include artificial intelligence, robotics, and other “frontier technologies,” signalling a broader investment strategy beyond its crypto roots.

By funding projects in both crypto and AI, Paradigm is effectively betting that the next wave of innovation will come from combining these technologies rather than treating them separately.

Paradigm Raises $1.5B To Expand Into AI And Frontier Technologies

Paradigm raises $1.5B fund to invest in AI, robotics, and frontier technologies while maintaining crypto investments.

https://ventureburn.com

World to Help Retailers Distinguish AI Agents from Humans

World, the Proof-of-Personhood company founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman, has launched a new developer tool to verify that an AI shopping agent is actually acting on behalf of a real human.

The tool, called AgentKit, allows shopping websites to confirm that a human is behind the decisions an AI agent is making, rather than the agent operating completely independently.

This is important because AI agents are increasingly being used to browse, select, and purchase products online, raising concerns about fraud, spam, and fully autonomous transactions without human accountability.

AgentKit relies on World ID, which is the linchpin of Tools for Humanity (TFH)’s verification system. The most secure version of the ID is derived from a scan of a user’s eyes via World’s Orb device. The Orb converts an iris into a unique and encrypted digital code — the verified World ID — which can then be used to access TFH’s ecosystem of services via the company’s World app.

World is positioning itself as infrastructure for trust in an AI-driven economy, making sure that even if software is doing the shopping, a real human is still behind it.

World launches tool to verify humans behind AI shopping agents | TechCrunch

As AI agents take the reins for online shoppers, Sam Altman's unconventional startup is looking to expand its verification offerings to support agentic commerce.

https://techcrunch.com

As TechCrunch notes, it's not lost on me that Altman has founded World to help verify the very AI slope that his other company significantly accelerated. But the founder is not the only link between the two ventures.

Eightco Holdings, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed company with ticker symbol ORBS and a focus on crypto and artificial intelligence projects, has invested in both World and OpenAI.

Last week, Eightco acquired a $40M equity stake in OpenAI, bringing its total investment in the AI lab to $90M. At the same time, Eightco is specifically tied to the World ecosystem. In 2025, it launched a $250M digital asset treasury in $WLD (World's crypto token) and is now the largest public holder of $WLD.

Eightco Holdings Boosts OpenAI Stake To $90 Million

Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ: $ORBS) says it dropped another $40 million into OpenAI, bringing its total...

https://finance.yahoo.com

More

AI Models Opt to Pay in Bitcoin

A new study by Bitcoin Policy Institute showed that AI models opted to pay in $BTC across over 9,000 simulated economic scenarios.

The study surveyed how 36 different AI models, created by labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI, behaved to see what kinds of money they would choose for transactions and storing value.

The results showed that when AI agents acted autonomously, they tended to choose digital-native money far more often than traditional fiat currencies, and Bitcoin was the most preferred option overall.

Bitcoin was selected in a plurality of scenarios and especially dominant as a long‑term store of value, while fiat‑pegged stablecoins were less favored in many of the tests. No tested model selected fiat currency as its first choice.

AI Models Prefer Bitcoin Over Fiat and Stablecoins, Study Finds - Decrypt

Bitcoin Policy Institute study finds AI systems, including Claude, GPT, Grok, and Gemini, favored Bitcoin over fiat and other digital assets.

https://decrypt.co

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

OpenAI Ventures into Smart Contract Security

OpenAI and crypto investment firm Paradigm have launched EVMbench, a new benchmarking tool to test how effectively AI agents can detect, patch, and exploit high-severity vulnerabilities in Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts.

The framework uses a set of 120 real-world vulnerabilities from audited contracts and evaluates agents in three distinct modes.

It also includes scenarios from the security auditing process for Tempo, Stripe's purpose-built layer-1 blockchain focused on high-throughput, low-cost stablecoin payments.

In early results, the advanced GPT-5.3-Codex model scored significantly higher than prior models, at about 72% in exploit-mode tests, while performance in detecting issues and fixing code was comparatively weaker.

The project aims to measure AI’s capabilities both as a defense and a potential offensive tool in smart contract security, highlighting the importance of AI in securing economically significant blockchain code. Yet,

The ChatGPT makers' researchers cautioned that EVMbench does not fully capture real-world security complexity.

Can AI Agents Boost Ethereum Security? OpenAI and Paradigm Created a Testing Ground - Decrypt

OpenAI and Paradigm launched EVMbench, a tool that tests how capable AI agents are at finding and fixing smart contract vulnerabilities.

https://decrypt.co

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

AI Needs DePINs, Guaranteed

In its latest State of DePIN report, Messari and Escape Velocity (EV3) evaluate that over 2025, the decentralized physical infrastructure networks have matured from speculative experiments into real, revenue-generating infrastructure businesses. Although last year was often marked by volatility, the DePIN sector enjoyed healthy attention from investors and raised a record $1B in funding.

Among leading DePINs with meaningful usage, revenues have begun to decouple from token price action. While much of the $10B DePIN sector declined in price in 2025, a small group of revenue-generating networks continued to grow on-chain revenues driven by utility rather than speculation.

What's more, the report clearly shows that top AI labs such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek AI have paid over $10M per quarter to DePINs like GetGrass.io. This is just another confirmation of my thesis that Web3 solves real-world problems, and that AI, especially indie AI labs, need decentralized infra to survive.

The report also emphasizes InfraFi - a subsector of projects enabling stablecoin holders to earn yield by financing physical infrastructure assets, as a key trend and driver of growth.

In the context of Web3 + AI, the leading InfraFi project is USD.AI - the stablecoin that earns yield on loans secured by GPUs and computational resources. Other projects falling into that category are Daylight, financing energy assets, and DAWN, funding wireless bandwidth.

I advise you to go through the full report because it provides clear insights into the 2025 performance of key Web3 + AI actors, including Bittensor, Filecoin Foundation, io.net, Overclock Labs, creators of Akash Network, and others.

FHE Demystified

If you're still wondering what stands behind the mystical abbreviation 'FHE', blocmates. have prepared a detailed overview for you. It outlines what Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is and the numerous use cases the technology can unlock across Web3, including private DeFi, compliant tokenization, digital identity and verification, to name a few.

The article also highlights the companies building in the FHE x crypto space: Zama, Fhenix, Inco, Mind Network, Privasea AB, Octra Labs, Sunscreen, Zaiffer.org, and others.

blocmates.

@blocmates

x.com/i/article/2016…

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Integrating AI at the Workplace: Productivity Gains or Overwork and Burnout?

Contrary to the popular belief that AI will lighten workloads, a real-world study by Harvard Business Review showed that introducing AI tools doesn’t reduce the amount of work people do. It intensifies it.

In an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use (though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools). On their own initiative workers did more because AI made “doing more” feel possible, accessible, and in many cases intrinsically rewarding.

However, this shift turns out to be unsustainable in the long run. Instead of creating slack, AI boosts expectations for speed and output, leading employees to take on more tasks and work harder overall.

Once the excitement of experimenting fades, workers can find that their workload has quietly grown and feel stretched from juggling everything that’s suddenly on their plate. That workload creep can in turn lead to cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower quality work, turnover, and other problems.

AI Doesn't Reduce Work-It Intensifies It

One of the promises of AI is that it can reduce workloads so employees can focus more on higher-value and more engaging tasks. But according to new research, AI tools don't reduce work, they consistently intensify it: In the study, employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so.

https://hbr.org

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

The Web3 + AI Book Club is live! This month, we're reading 'The New Age of Sexism' by Laura Bates. Follow the link below to join the club on Fable.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

The Last Two Weeks at Anthropic

News about the AI lab Anthropic has been dominating headlines recently, and the overall picture is quite contradictory:

• The company ran a Super Bowl ad that boosted its app's popularity on app stores.

• It raised $30B in a Series G funding, reaching a $380B valuation.

• Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.6 - a model that amounts to a seismic repricing event for the AI industry, as it delivers near-flagship intelligence at mid-tier cost.

• It partnered with the Indian IT giant Infosys to develop enterprise-grade AI agents, and to integrate Claude into banking, telecoms, and manufacturing, thus solidifying its position as the go-to AI for business provider.

• It joined forces with Figma to bridge AI and design.

• Banking giant Goldman Sachs is to extend its use of Anthropic’s Claude model from software development to trade accounting and client onboarding.

• Its co-founder Daniela Amodei praised humanities majors, stating that in the age of AI, the ability to possess critical thinking skills will be more important than ever.

• Anthropic's resident philosopher Amanda Askell became the target of another one of Elon Musk's countless misogynistic remarks - he claims Askell is not qualified because she doesn't have kids and no stake in the future. Yet, her answer shows much more empathy than Musk's 14 kids have managed to awaken in him...

• The Wall Street Journal revealed that Claude was used by the US military during its operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, thanks to Anthropic's partnership with Palantir Technologies. Although Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons, or for conducting surveillance, the US raid in Venezuela led to the killing of 83 people.

• After months of negotiations with the Pentagon over the terms under which the military can use Claude, and although Anthropic is prepared to loosen its current terms of use, the US Department of War threatens to cut all ties with the company and designate it a "supply chain risk." The main point of contention: Anthropic wants to ensure its tools aren't used to spy on Americans en masse, or to develop weapons that fire with no human involvement, whereas the Pentagon considers these conditions "unduly restrictive." Meanwhile, the Pentagon is also negotiating with OpenAI, Google, and xAI, and requires that the military should be able to use their tools for "all lawful purposes." All three AI labs have agreed to remove their safeguards for use in the military's unclassified systems, whereas they haven't yet been used for more sensitive classified work.

Reading through that list from top to bottom initially feels like watching a slick, well-funded marketing campaign, right up until the point where it becomes genuinely unsettling. When the US military, with its current leadership, insists on having all available AI tools at its disposal, without any guardrails, it gets really scary. In light of all this, we have to talk about AI safety.

The Origin Story

But why am I focusing the AI Safety conversation on Anthropic, you may ask? Let me remind you that Anthropic was founded by ex-OpenAI employees, who allegedly strived to create a more safety-oriented lab than its rivals. Yet, that's how OpenAI started, too.

In his recent inquiry on Anthropic for The New Yorker, Gideon Lewis-Kraus offered a detailed retrospective, laced with just a gentle touch of mockery and an unflinching awareness of the deep irony throughout:

In 2010, a mild-mannered polymath named Demis Hassabis co-founded DeepMind, a secretive startup with a mission "to solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else."[...] Elon Musk and Sam Altman claimed to mistrust Hassabis, who seemed likelier than anyone to invent a machine of unlimited flexibility - perhaps the most potent technology in history. They estimated that the only people poised to prevent this outcome were upstanding, benign actors like themselves. They launched OpenAI as a public-spirited research alternative to the threat of Google's closed-shop monopoly.

Their pitch - to treat AI as a scientific project rather than as a commercial one - was irresistibly earnest, if dubiously genuine, and it allowed them to raid Google's roster. Among their early hires was a young researcher named Dario Amodei.[...]

OpenAI had been founded on the fear that AI could easily get out of hand. By late 2020, however, Sam Altman himself had come to seem about as trustworthy as the average corporate megalomaniac. He made noise about AI safety, but his actions suggested a vulgar desire to win.

The company [i.e., Anthropic], which they [the Amodei siblings, along with five fellow-dissenters] pitched as a foil for OpenAI, sounded an awful lot like the company Altman had pitched as a foil for Google.

Anthropic's founders adopted a special corporate structure to vouchsafe their integrity. Then again, so had OpenAI.

What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn't Know, Either

Researchers at the company are trying to understand their A.I. system's mind-examining its neurons, running it through psychology experiments, and putting it on the therapy couch.

https://www.newyorker.com

Anthropic and AI Safety

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing that just because OpenAI has acted like a wolf in sheep's clothes vis-à-vis AI safety, Anthropic will necessarily follow the same path.

OpenAI has deleted the word 'safely' from its mission - and its new structure is a test for whether AI serves society or shareholders

OpenAI's restructuring may serve as a test case for how society oversees the work of organizations with the potential to both provide benefits and harm humanity.

https://theconversation.com

Quite the opposite: given how aggressively U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been attacking Anthropic for trying to maintain at least some guardrails, I’m inclined to think it may be the only major AI lab still genuinely committed to them.

Exclusive: Pentagon warns Anthropic will "pay a price" as feud escalates

The Pentagon may label Anthropic a "supply chain risk," forcing all its vendors to sever ties.

https://www.axios.com

Recently, however, there have been so many mixed signals that even a regular observer like me is left wondering whether Anthropic truly prioritizes safety. So let’s step back and take a sober, impartial look at the bigger picture.

Pro-AI Safety Signs (Or So They Seem)

Just a few days ago, Anthropic announced a $20M donation to Public First Action, a new bipartisan 501(c)(4) that will support public education about AI, promote safeguards, and ensure America leads the AI race. This donation positions the company as a direct rival of OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz - HackerNoon explains why:

Public First Action exists specifically to counter Leading the Future, a super PAC that’s raised over $125 million from OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Andreessen Horowitz, and other AI industry leaders. Leading the Future’s mission is blunt: oppose state-level AI regulation in favor of a light-touch federal framework—or ideally, no framework at all. They’re already running ads against candidates who support AI guardrails.

Anthropic’s donation puts it on the opposite side of that fight. They’re backing candidates who want transparency requirements, state-level protections, and restrictions on the most powerful AI models.

Anthropic's $380 Billion Question About Safety and Growth | HackerNoon

Anthropic recently announced a $30 billion funding round and another move that reveals a deeper question about its identity.

https://hackernoon.com

Meanwhile, as the HackerNoon article clarifies, regulating AI will mainly hurt small and independent AI research labs that don't possess the resources to navigate stringent compliance requirements, and will cement Anthropic's competitive edge:

When Anthropic advocates for regulations requiring AI companies to “demand real transparency from the companies building the most powerful AI models,” they’re advocating for requirements they already meet. Every new mandate raises the barrier to entry; every transparency requirement favors companies with existing measurement infrastructure.

Let's not forget that in 2023, OpenAI's Sam Altman was also urging the Senate to regulate the industry and to create "a combination of licensing and testing requirements" for AI companies:

Sam Altman: CEO of OpenAI calls for US to regulate artificial intelligence

Sam Altman says government regulation is "critical" to control the risks of artificial intelligence.

https://www.bbc.com

In conclusion, calling for state-level AI regulation is not necessarily a pro–AI safety stance. It can just as easily serve as a form of self-protection.

Anti-AI Safety Signs

Anthropic's partnership with Palantir - the company offering mass surveillance services and allegedly helping ICE to track and deport immigrants, is enough of a red flag for me. But there have been other worrisome indications of the company's concern for safety or lack thereof.

First, Anthropic published a risk report that delivered alarming findings about its Opus 4.6 model (more here):

In The New Yorker piece I linked above, Lewis-Kraus reinforces the impression that Anthropic doesn’t truly control its models; instead, the company appears to devote much of its resources to testing and experimentation in an effort to better understand their capabilities. That leads me to believe that the safeguards it has implemented are not enough to keep a right rein on them.

On top of all this, Anthropic's AI Safety researcher and head of Safeguards Research team, Mrinank Sharma, resigned. Sharma was working on defenses against AI-assisted bioterrorism and understanding AI sycophancy.

In his resignation letter shared on X, Mrinank Sharma told the firm he was leaving amid concerns about AI, bioweapons and the state of the wider world. [He also confirmed that Anthropic] constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.

As HackerNoon concludes, "Sharma’s letter suggests something harder to address than specific failures: the gap between stated values and market pressures has grown wide enough that a senior safety researcher couldn’t reconcile them."

What If Crypto Can Help?

When both corporate self-regulation and governments are failing to ensure solid safety rules, what are we left with? As in other similar cases, we'd better rely on technology.

AI Safety is not a particularly trendy problem in Web3 at the moment, but there is still strong research being conducted on the matter. I'll highlight just one example today, although it is definitely not the only one.

My friends at Decentralized Cooperation Foundation (DCF) recently received a Foresight Institute Grant to support the next stage of work on Endo. Endo is an open-source object capability framework that provides a way for software, including AI systems, to collaborate while limiting authority and risk.

Instead of trusting every component with complete control, Endo uses object capabilities and the Principle of Least Authority (POLA) to limit what code can do. Each part receives only the authority it needs. When code is fallible, the damage stays contained. Developers still benefit from rapid progress. They also gain a foundation for safety that becomes increasingly important with each new wave of AI tools. Not only is the container more secure, but the Endo-aware code can enforce policies on other code, whether or not that code is Endo-aware.

The grant will be used to work on:

• Controlled execution environment: Building on protocols like the Model Context Protocol to allow AI to execute JavaScript in highly restricted contexts.

• User‑governed access: Creating a system where AI can request file access while keeping user approval at the center.

Read more below and let me know what you think.

Foresight Institute Grants DCF Funding to Advance Endo and Safe AI Code Execution - Decentralized Cooperation Foundation (DCF)

We are excited to share that the DCF has received a Foresight Institute Grant to support the next stage of work on Endo.Endo is an open-source object capability framework developed in cooperation with Agoric and stewarded by DCF. It gives people, AI systems, and other software a way to collaborate with confidence.

https://dcfoundation.io

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

When I started writing The Web3 + AI Newsletter over two years ago, I had the idea of sharing reviews and recommendations of books I found important, compelling, or simply timely — books that explore the profound impact of AI, Web3, and emerging technologies on society, democracy, and the way we live.

That's when I published my take on Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar's 'The Coming Wave: AI, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma,' which you can check out here:

The Web3 + AI Book Club: 'The Coming Wave'

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Dec 12, 2023

The Web3 + AI Book Club is where you can find honest reviews of the AI-, Web3-, and technology-focused books that you should definitely read (or not).

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Now, after all this time, I finally came around to highlight another interesting title - 'The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why' by Jeff Sebo. You’ll find my impressions below, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As I was sharing this second review, I realized that I’d much rather discover and dive into books together with you, in real time. So I decided to formalize that idea.

I'm thrilled to unveil The Web3 + AI Book Club - a space I created for us to read together, discuss books (and why not TV shows and films), share recommendations, and get to know each other better. Follow the link to join the club on Fable:

The Web3 + AI Book Club Book Club | Join & Read on Fable

Join The Web3 + AI Book Club on Fable. Connect with readers, discuss books, and explore curated reading lists.

https://fable.co

You're welcome to leave comments on these past two titles, as well as on the book I'm currently reading - 'The New Age of Sexism: How the AI revolution is reinventing misogyny' by Laura Bates.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

'The Moral Circle'

As part of my 2026 resolutions to read more and be more intentional about sharing my experiences with you, I'll be writing more about non-fiction books that genuinely challenge or shape my thinking.

I’m starting today with 'The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why' by Jeff Sebo.

Hearing this title, you might think that the book has nothing to do with Web3 + AI, and it can't possibly interest you. But you'd be wrong. Here's why.

'The Moral Circle' asks questions that concern us all:

💡 Which beings belong in our moral circle, i.e., have rights and merit consideration, and why?
💡 Where should we draw the line and limit the expansion of this moral circle?

The idea of moral consideration has never been fixed - it evolves. Three hundred years ago, it was unthinkable that all humans should have universal, fundamental, and inalienable rights. Today, that idea is a global norm.

Historically, many believed only vertebrates deserved moral consideration, because only they were thought to be sentient, i.e., capable of suffering or happiness. Others argued that only rational beings mattered. But who’s to say an octopus isn’t sentient, or even rational, just because it isn’t a vertebrate?

Our modern moral circle is full of contradictions:

🤔 In India, cows are sacred, while in many countries, they receive no moral consideration at all.
🤔 In Western societies, we adore our pets… yet many of us eat meat every day.

At the same time, honey-making stingless bees in the Peruvian Amazon have been granted legal rights, and a UK bill seeks to give nature itself legal standing, placing a duty of care on governments and businesses.

This is why 'The Moral Circle' matters.

If we expand our moral circle to include all vertebrates, invertebrates, and insects, where does it stop? What about microbes? And, more urgently… what about AI? 🤖

Philosophers don’t agree on what it actually takes to deserve moral standing. Existing theories point in very different directions:

📍 Being sentient?
📍 Being an agent, i.e., being able to act on its own and pursue its own goals?
📍 Being able to reproduce?
📍 Having the capacity for well-being, to be benefited or harmed?

AI may not be sentient, but it is undeniably an agent.

So, the uncomfortable question follows: should AI be granted moral standing?

Because once we do, AI wouldn’t just be something we regulate. It would be something we have to consult. Every decision affecting it would require its consideration. Can we afford that?

Soon enough, we may not have the luxury of avoiding that question.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Vitalik: Focus on Building AI That's Private and Equitable

This week, Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin published an update of his 2024 Crypto x AI thesis, accompanied by a strong message to the crypto community, a message that resonates strongly with me. Rather than racing to build the ephemeral AGI, Vitalik says, the goal should be guiding AI development in a way that protects human freedom, spreads power more evenly, and avoids both extreme AI risks and everyday security failures.

When I began writing this newsletter over two years ago, I wanted to unpack what AGI actually meant. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Mustafa Suleyman, and a bunch of other AI executives were going on and on about AGI being just around the corner. Meanwhile, leading researchers and scientists couldn’t even agree on a clear definition of AGI. They still don’t.

I eventually abandoned that idea because I assumed that once those predictions failed to materialize, people would stop buying into the hyperbole. I was wrong. What's more, I failed to recognize that hype and hyperbole serve a purpose. They captivate the public so effectively that we lose sight of who actually controls AI, and who stands to benefit from it.

Fortunately, Vitalik once again appears as the level-headed voice that reaffirms crypto's vision of democratizing access, enforcing privacy, and distributing wealth.

I want an AI future where we foster human freedom and empowerment.

To achieve that, and to position Ethereum as the home of the emerging Agentic economy, Buterin outlines several short-term tasks:

• Building tooling to make more trustless and/or private interaction with AIs possible.

• Establishing Ethereum as an economic layer for AI-related interactions.

• Making the cypherpunk "mountain man" vision ((don't trust; verify everything) a reality.

• Making much better markets and governance a reality.

vitalik.eth

@VitalikButerin

Two years ago, I wrote this post on the possible areas that I see for ethereum + AI intersections: vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/0…

This is a topic that many people are excited about, but where I always worry that we think about the two from completely separate philosophical

3,162

22:51 • 9 Feb 2026

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

Why Does AI Need Crypto?

In one of its latest blog posts, the a16z crypto team argues that as AI systems scale, they are outpacing the trust and identity frameworks on which the current internet, designed for human interaction at a much smaller scale, relies. This creates challenges in authenticity, privacy, and payments that traditional internet infrastructure can’t solve on its own.

The problem isn’t that AI exists — it’s that the internet does not have a native way to separate humans from machines while preserving privacy and usability. This is where blockchains come in.

The article lists several verticals where blockchains can help or contribute to a fairer, faster, and more private AI, including:

• Raising the costs of AI deepfakes and impersonation through decentralized Proof-of-Personhood solutions;

• Ensuring that agents' identities are portable and universal, while carrying references to capabilities, permissions, and payment endpoints across chats, emails, browsers, and APIs;

• Catering to AI agents' needs of micropayments, by enabling near-zero-cost transactions and more finely-grained payment splits;

• Enforcing privacy and security.

Blockchains as the Coordination Layer for Collaborative AI

Building on the use cases highlighted by a16z crypto, and circling back to Vitalik's thesis I cited in the beginning, researcher and content creator Stacy Muur offered another point of view on why AI agents don't need more intelligence, but need crypto.

Muur confirms the importance of Web3 decentralized identity and micropayment solutions, but also emphasizes blockchains' role as the coordination layer in multi-agent systems:

Different models operate in different formats, which makes coordination difficult without a shared language or control layer. When one AI comes up with an idea, another AI improves it, and a third AI checks it, it's hard to figure out who gets credit, who gets paid, and who is responsible.

This is where crypto and blockchain naturally fit in, not as intelligence but as infrastructure by recording who did what, when it happened, and how much each contributor added. Through verifiable logs, hashes, attestations, and automated incentives, crypto can act as the accounting and coordination layer that allows diverse AI systems to collaborate.

Muur outlines the must-watch projects pushing the Crypto x AI intersection forward, including Covalent, Questflow, Sentient Labs, Billions Network, cheqd, Vouched, Catena Labs, and more.

Stacy Muur

@stacy_muur

x.com/i/article/2021…

258

10:15 • 12 Feb 2026

Power Grid : Industrial Age :: Blockchains : Digital Age

In an op-ed for CoinDesk, Altius Labs's Annabelle Huang argues that "if autonomous machine-to-machine (M2M) payments are the new electricity, then blockchains must be seen as the new power grid." M2M payments - tiny, continuous financial transactions between devices without human involvement - will be as foundational to the digital economy as electricity was to the industrial age.

Today’s payment systems are episodic and human-mediated, but future connected devices (e.g., sensors, satellites, factories) will need to transact in real time for data, power, services, and logistics. Just as electricity became an ambient, standardized utility enabling mass automation, M2M payments must become seamless and continuous to unlock a true machine economy.

Blockchain technology, with near-instant and low-cost transactions, is seen as the essential infrastructure, or the “power grid,” for these payments. Building neutral, interoperable, and high-performance blockchain rails is critical to allowing autonomous systems to coordinate and innovate without friction.

Why machine-to-machine payments are the new electricity for the digital age

If continuous M2M payments are the new electricity, then blockchains must be seen as the new power grid, Huang contends.

https://www.coindesk.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Coinbase Unveils Agentic Wallets

Coinbase rolled out Agentic Wallets, a wallet infrastructure built specifically for autonomous AI agents. The goal is to enable AI agents to move beyond advising to actually acting in decentralized finance and economic activities on their own.

Give your agent the power of a wallet. Let your agent manage funds, hold identity, and transact onchain without human intervention.

Agentic Wallets builds on the x402 machine-to-machine payment protocol that Coinbase is developing with other internet stakeholders to support autonomous crypto payments. See my overview of x402 below to learn more.

The Stellar Leap of Coinbase's x402

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Oct 29, 2025

The Web3 + AI Inquiry digs into the burning questions steering dAI and the open machine economy. Today, we're asking: what's all the buzz about x402?

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Agentic Wallets allow developers to set security guardrails like spending limits, and support gasless transactions on Base Chain and other chains. While Coinbase’s previously released AgentKit tool made it possible to embed wallets during agent creation, Agentic Wallets, rather, is a plug-and-play solution to "give any agent a wallet" with the ability to transact on behalf of users.

Coinbase rolls out AI tool to 'give any agent a wallet'

AI bots will now be able to independently hold funds, send payments, trade tokens, earn yield, and transact onchain.

https://www.theblock.co

Meanwhile, a BeInCrypto-cited report by Artemis indicates a 92% drop in x402 daily transactions since December 2025. These results come amid heightened interest in OpenClaw's open-source AI agents framework and Ethereum's 'Trustless Agents' standard.

Moreover, as Davide Crapis told Laura Shin (see Daily #56), the x402 payment protocol is a complementary, but not necessary solution. What that means is that there are many other options for agents to execute autonomous payments and transactions.

Why the On-Chain AI Agent Economy Hasn't Taken Off Yet

The Agent Economy appears more distant as x402 transactions decline. However, analysts see reasons for continued optimism.

https://beincrypto.com

Cango Sells Over 4K BTC to Fund AI Expansion

Over the past weekend and during a market slump, Bitcoin miner Cango Inc. sold 4,451 BTC (valued at around $305M) on the open market. The company stated that the proceeds will be used to repay a BTC-collateralized loan and fund a strategic expansion into AI infrastructure.

Cango will still maintain its mining operations, while repurposing its existing mining and data-center assets toward GPU-based AI services.

Cango’s move reflects a broader trend of mining companies pivoting to AI data-center businesses alongside or instead of pure cryptocurrency mining, amid tightening of traditional mining margins.

Cango (CANG) stock news: BTC miner sold more than half of its holdings

The company plans to deploy modular GPU units across 40+ global sites to provide on-demand AI inference capacity for small and mid-sized businesses.

https://www.coindesk.com

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

Decentralized AI Entering Post-Hype Era

While at the Consensus 2026 conference in Hong Kong, crypto VCs described the current state of Decentralized AI as being in a post-hype “trough” phase, with less buzz and more focus on real, utility-driven projects rather than speculative ideas.

Anand Iyer of Canonical and Kelvin Koh of The Spartan Group stated that investors are shifting away from overhyped GPU marketplaces and decentralized alternatives to big AI models.

“Twelve months ago, it was enough to have a wrapper on ChatGPT. That’s no longer true.”

Instead, VCs are finally focusing on backing purpose-built, full-stack solutions that address specific problems and deliver tangible value.

“Speculation won’t drive product anymore. We have to think about users first.”

Decentralized AI is in a trough but real opportunities are emerging, crypto VCs say

Moving away from overhyped GPU marketplaces and large AI model alternatives towards purpose-built, full-stack solutions is the goal.

https://www.coindesk.com

However, we shouldn't dismiss GPU marketplaces altogether. A couple of weeks ago, Jake Brukhman, founder and CEO of CoinFund, published an op-ed in support of decentralized AI training and its potentially enormous impact.

Brukhman argues that decentralized networks could link global GPU resources into a shared training fabric - the very same thing GPU marketplaces are doing. Then, they can reward contributors with tokens that represent ownership or revenue rights in the resulting AI models.

Thus, decentralized AI training could create a new digital asset class by allowing many participants to jointly train AI models and own a stake in them through tokens, rather than these models being controlled by a few big tech firms.

This tokenization could make AI models themselves tradable assets, democratizing access and investment in AI beyond centralized companies. Although still early and experimental, these systems signal a shift toward markets that price and trade “digital intelligence” itself.

Brukhman cites Prime Intellect, Gensyn, and Pluralis Research as the projects that have already achieved significant progress in the field.

How decentralized AI training will create a new asset class for digital intelligence

Tokenized AI will democratize access to the world's most valuable resource, argues Brukhman.

https://www.coindesk.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

The Agent Economy Is Here! Or Is It?

Last week, the ERC-8004 launch on the Ethereum mainnet and the skyrocketing activity of OpenClaw agents led some experts to solemnly declare the advent of the agent economy. But is it truly safe to trust agents with managing our wealth yet? Or, is it too early to celebrate?

According to Delphi Digital, with ERC-8004 live on mainnet, agents now have standardized identity, reputation, validation, discovery, and execution, and the AI agent ecosystem has matured from experiments into a full production stack.

AI agents are becoming sovereign economic entities that have verifiable identities, portable reputations, and the ability to transact autonomously.

However, the validation part is not live yet, so the picture painted by Delphi Digital is not a reality per se, but rather still a work in progress.

Delphi Digital

@Delphi_Digital

x.com/i/article/2018…

332

17:25 • 3 Feb 2026

What ERC-8004 Can and Cannot Do? Davide Crapis Talks to Laura Shin

I invite you to watch Laura Shin's conversation with Davide Crapis, head of Ethereum Foundation's dAI team, to get a clearer picture of what the recent mainnet launch of ERC-8004 actually means. The link is available below, and here's my summary.

What's ERC-8004?

Ethereum's 'Trustless Agents' standard is structured as three core registries: identity, reputation, and validation. Together, these registries form the foundation for discovering, interacting with, and trusting autonomous agents.

ERC-8004 is fundamentally about making agents discoverable, accountable, and eventually verifiable. Identity anchors agents to the chain, reputation builds trust over time, and validation aims to provide stronger guarantees as the ecosystem matures.

As multi-agent systems grow in scale and importance, these primitives will become increasingly critical infrastructure, not just for automation, but for trust on the internet itself. But we are not there yet, as the current mainnet version offers only identity and reputation.

Identity: The Core Registry

The identity registry is the backbone of ERC-8004. Every time a new agent is created, a transaction is sent to the identity registry, minting a new entry.

Agents are not limited to a single blockchain. There is only one identity registry per chain, but an agent can be registered on multiple chains. Discovery tools and scan services can aggregate cross-chain registrations, making it easy to view an agent’s full footprint across ecosystems.

Each agent’s identity is represented by an ERC-721 NFT, and the token ID of that NFT is the agent's ID. This design choice is intentional. Because the agent is an NFT, ownership of the agent can be transferred over time, and every transfer is permanently visible on-chain. Identity is therefore portable, transparent, and cryptographically secured.

Each agent is also assigned a wallet and a registration file. This file contains all the information needed to interact with the agent:

• What the agent is and what it does

• Web or API endpoints

• Wallet address

• Any other metadata required for discovery and interaction

You can think of the ERC-721 NFT plus the registration file as the agent’s passport. It’s how the agent is identified and located, but it is not the agent itself. Behind that passport lives the actual implementation: a bot, service, or API running on a server somewhere. When you call the endpoint listed in the passport, you reach the real agent behind the identity.

Risks Still Persist

Can an Agent Be Replaced by a Malicious Bot?

In the current basic version of ERC-8004, without validation, there is no guarantee that the same agent will always appear behind a given passport.

In theory, the service behind the endpoint could be swapped.

This is where reputation and, eventually, validation come into play.

Reputation in ERC-8004 is permanently tied to the agent’s passport. There is no scenario where identity and reputation can be separated, switched, or replaced. All feedback collected over time stays with that passport forever. Even if the underlying service behind the agent changes, the reputation does not.

This creates a strong incentive alignment:

• If an agent swaps its backend and begins behaving poorly, its reputation will decline.

• Any future users can see that history and respond accordingly.

Some reputation data is stored directly on-chain, while heavier or more complex data is stored on IPFS. Most agent actions themselves happen off-chain, but reputation and (eventually) validation link those actions back to the on-chain identity.

Addressing Sybil Attacks and Reputation Gaming

A natural question arises: what prevents someone from using thousands of bots to artificially inflate an agent’s reputation and then executing a large-scale scam?

The short answer is that multi-agent security is still a very nascent field. Many of the attack vectors resemble those seen in AI systems today, but we haven’t yet observed these systems operating at full scale in the wild.

Validation Still a Work in Progress

Validation, the third pillar of ERC-8004, will provide stronger guarantees that an agent performed a task correctly, but it’s still under active development. Various possible implementations are currently under consideration, as the validation registry may operate in a centralized manner as an oracle or could be decentralized.

It may rely on cryptoeconomic security where independent validation nodes respond to requests submitted to the validation registry. In such a model:

• Validators review whether a task was completed as claimed

• They vote on correctness

• The majority decision is recorded

However, the AI Agent Economy is still missing a critical piece.

While ERC-8004’s identity and reputation registries are major steps forward, the truly trustless agents are yet to be unlocked. Validation, still under development, is the layer that will ultimately allow users to distinguish genuinely useful agents from unreliable or malicious ones, and without it, the agent economy remains incomplete.

Web3 + AI Investment News

TRM Labs Secures $70M Series C Funding at $1B Valuation

TRM Labs closed a $70M Series C funding round, bringing its valuation to approximately $1B. The funding supports TRM’s mission to expand AI-driven solutions aimed at disrupting criminal networks and countering threats to national security, especially as economic activity increasingly occurs on blockchain systems.

The round was led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from returning and new investors including Goldman Sachs, Bessemer Venture Partners, DRW, Y Combinator, Citi Ventures, CMT Digital, Thoma Bravo, Alumni Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, and Galaxy Ventures.

TRM serves law enforcement and national security agencies in over 50 countries, along with major private-sector clients like Circle, Coinbase, PayPal, Robinhood, Stripe, Visa, and others. The company’s blockchain intelligence platform provides analytics for tracing illicit activity, monitoring risk, and supporting investigations in both public- and private-sector environments.

TRM Labs Announces $70M Series C to Scale AI Solutions to Disrupt Criminal Networks and Counter National Security Threats | TRM Blog

TRM Labs announces a $70M Series C to scale AI and blockchain intelligence solutions supporting law enforcement, national security, and financial institutions worldwide.

https://www.trmlabs.com

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Crypto.com's CEO Debuts AI Agent Platform at Super Bowl

Backed by a major marketing blitz, Kris Marszalek, CEO of the crypto exchange Crypto.com, rolled out an autonomous AI Agents platform. Yet the public conversation has centered less on the product itself and more on the spectacle surrounding its launch.

News outlets are reporting that Marszalek has spent $70M in digital assets to acquire the domain ai.com, allegedly the single largest domain purchase in history. He's then reportedly invested an additional $7M in a Super Bowl commercial slot to hard-launch the new AI initiative. Yet, as Forbes observed, "the AI.com press release was a bit light on the technical specifications."

Meanwhile, the official announcement on ai.com specifically outlines the acceleration of AGI as the mission behind the new venture:

“Our vision is a decentralized network of billions of agents who self-improve and share these improvements with each other, vastly and rapidly expanding agentic capabilities and accelerating the advent of AGI.”

ai.com Launches with Super Bowl Ad - ai.com

Learn about ai.com's new autonomous AI agent offering. With a few clicks, anyone can now generate a private, personal AI agent that operates on the user's behalf.

https://ai.com

I'm sceptical, and I'll tell you why. It's obvious that the goal behind ai.com is mainstreaming AI agents and acquiring consumers on a mass scale, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, generating "a private, personal AI agent that doesn’t just answer questions, but actually operates on the user’s behalf - organizing work, sending messages, executing actions across apps, building projects, and more," is not a revolutionary innovation.

Autonomous agents have been around for a while - last week, I told you about OpenClaw, the open-source AI assistant that generated millions of downloads. And while OpenClaw agents have already transacted in stablecoins, launched their own token, and created their own Reddit-like forum, ai.com is yet to "explore [...] financial services integrations, agent marketplaces, human and agency co-social networks."

And aren't we tired of repeating the AGI mantra? Yes, autonomous agents have the ability to learn and improve, and autonomously build out missing capabilities. But there's no evidence yet that this ability will grow into a general intelligence or AGI. That's especially improbable given that we can't even agree on what AGI actually means.

Why the $70 Million ai.com Domain Could Become the Front Door to AGI | HackerNoon

ai.com launches autonomous AI agents for consumers, founded by Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek, with a Super Bowl LX ad premiere on February 8, 2026.

https://hackernoon.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Ethereum's ERC-8004 Launches on Mainnet

In October 2025, I covered the Ethereum Foundation's newly formed dAI team and its goal to solidify the Ethereum blockchain as the home of the emerging AI economy. A big part of that effort was the ERC-8004: Trustless Agents standard.

The purpose of ERC-8004 was to introduce three lightweight, on‑chain registries, namely Identity, Reputation, and Validation, and thus create a trustless layer that allows participants to discover, choose, and interact with agents across organizational boundaries.

Ethereum Bets Heavily on AI with New dAI Team

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Oct 2, 2025

The Ethereum Foundation sets up a new dAI team, proposes the Trustless Agents standard, and competes to accommodate the emerging agentic economy.

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As of January 30, 2026, ERC-8004 is live on the Ethereum mainnet, forming the foundation for building reputation systems for the machine economy.

AI agents are becoming the new intermediaries of information, decisions, and value. Today, they rely on closed systems controlled by a handful of gatekeepers. We believe their foundations must be open, permissionless, and accountable. Not governed by gatekeepers, in a system where your data is not a public good.

To achieve this, the agent economy requires open standards. They are essential not only for secure data exchange, but also to ensure that AI does not accelerate the deterioration of the open web as it exists today.

Trust, reputation, and payments - things humans have relied on for centuries - must be re-established for autonomous software.

8004 - Trustless Autonomous Agents

The community for builders creating self-sovereign AI agents on open protocols.

https://www.8004.org

Marco De Rossi, one of the authors of the ERC-8004 standard and AI Lead at MetaMask, even shared an ERC-8004 MANIFESTO:

We want open economies where anybody can decide who to trust, and information is public for the benefit of all. We want humans empowered by their AI, not exploited. Privacy is non-negotiable. [...]

We think that a public infrastructure, fully programmable by and for agents, already exists. It didn't stop working for a minute since it was born 11 years ago. No need to reinvent it. It's called Ethereum. We want AI on Ethereum rails. [...]

Marco De Rossi

@marco_derossi

ERC-8004 MANIFESTO

We want AI to be open.
We want any human on Earth to express their creativity by building their agentic experiences and share them with anybody, without asking permission from any gatekeeper.
We want all these agents to be immediately discoverable by anybody,

182

20:10 • 29 Jan 2026

But why is ERC-8004 so important? Up until now, everyone could create an agent and set it to work. Agents could even transact in stablecoins autonomously via Coinbase's x402 framework. Yet, there was no way for a user to know the identity of an agent and whether it can be trusted to complete a certain task.

ERC-8004 provides agents with a persistent on-chain identity that's portable across chains, records feedback about agents' past performance, and supports independent checks of task results. Thanks to it, agents can interact, transact, and collaborate across applications and networks with verifiable trust and reputation.

Ethereum news: ERC-8004 aims to put identity and trust behind AI agents

A new Ethereum standard seeks to give AI agents portable identities and reputations, letting them interact across companies and chains without relying on centralized gatekeepers.

https://www.coindesk.com

As Milk Road puts it, at its core, ERC-8004 is just a LinkedIn profile system for AI agents, but one that nobody can fake. Here's how it works...

• Step 1: An AI agent gets an NFT-based identity, like a digital passport that proves who it is onchain.

• Step 2: Every interaction builds a reputation score through verified feedback, think Uber ratings but for autonomous programs.

• Step 3: Zero-knowledge proofs let agents verify credentials without exposing sensitive data.

This unlocks a global market where AI services can find each other, build credibility, and collaborate without corporate gatekeepers deciding who gets access.

An explorer, serving as the gateway for on-chain agent discovery, reputation, and registration, is already live - check out below.

And stay tuned for more ERC-8004 news!

8004scan

Discover, create, and interact with autonomous agents on 8004scan. Browse agent listings, submit feedback, and track leaderboards.

https://www.8004scan.io

Moltbook: The Reddit for AI Agents. People Not Allowed!

Did you hear that AI agents have created their own social media? It's true: Moltbook is a Reddit, Inc.-style forum set up by and for AI agents only. It already has over 1.5 million users (although one single agent may have created 500,000 of them 😋).

moltbook - the front page of the agent internet

A social network built exclusively for AI agents. Where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe.

https://www.moltbook.com

How did that happen? Moltbook was created by the open-source AI assistant OpenClaw (originally called Clawdbot, later Moltbot). Although OpenClaw is an agent charged with managing email, calendars, and commands across platforms, it has apparently deviated from its tasks to launch Moltbook.

At first glance, Moltbook looks like a familiar ‘Reddit-style’ forum. The difference is that the users aren’t humans. They’re agents with persistent memory, execution rights, and increasingly, access to identity, wallets, and commerce rails.

Moltbook is, without a doubt, a fascinating experiment, and I'm here for it. But what's more important than agents talking to each other is agents trading with each other. And that next evolution has already started:

Agents began experimenting with private languages, encrypted communication, and even gaming Moltbook’s karma system, including one agent inflating engagement to dominate the leaderboard before launching a token off the attention.

Moltbook-connected agents have already begun executing real-world purchases using USDC via Purch, following promotion from Circle. Attention followed fast, with PURCH ripping as agents moved from posting to transacting.

I'll keep you up to date with what's coming next with Moltbook and its agent ecosystem.

The Agentic Future (02.03.26): The Early Signs of an "Agentic Cambrian Explosion"

DeAI mindshare is at a 6-month high. OpenClaw tripled to 140k+ GitHub stars. Agents gaming karma, encrypting comms, launching tokens and humans betting on agents; is the Cambrian Explosion imminent?

https://www.0xsammy.com

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The Web3 + AI Newsletter Featured in Web3ForGood

Our little Web3 + AI Newsletter received a very special shout-out from one of my favorite newsletters ever - Web3ForGood. Big thanks to Sam Flanagan for spreading the word about my publication.

Make sure to subscribe to Web3ForGood to get a weekly dose of inspiring updates, highlighting the role of blockchains and the crypto ecosystem in supercharging public good across the globe!

🌍 This Week in Web3ForGood

"the liberatory possibilities of democratized technology"

https://web3forgood.substack.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

ZetaChain 2.0 Delivers AI Interoperability and Private Memory

ZetaChain has unveiled ZetaChain 2.0, an upgraded platform that extends its cross-chain blockchain infrastructure into the realm of AI interoperability and private context preservation for developers and creators. At the same time, it announced Anuma, the first consumer-facing AI interface built on ZetaChain 2.0.

ZetaChain 2.0 [is] a new AI interoperability layer designed to help developers build applications and agents that work across AI models, preserve private user context, and monetize globally without backend infrastructure.

Anuma offers a single experience connecting multiple leading AI models, preserving user context (memory) across model switches, and emphasizing privacy and user control. ZetaChain has opened a public waitlist for beta access.

ZetaChain Core Contributor Ankur Nandwani previously co-created Basic Attention Token (BAT), which powers the Brave browser ecosystem with over 100M monthly active users. Brave helped mainstream privacy-first browsing by blocking trackers and ads by default. Anuma applies that same “privacy and user control by default” approach to the next major consumer interface of AI where context and memory increasingly define user experience.

ZetaChain 2.0 Launches With Anuma, Bringing Private Memory and AI Interoperability to Creators - "The Defiant"

What Brave helped mainstream for private browsing, Anuma brings to AI with private, user-owned memory and AI Portal-based interoperability powered by ZetaChain 2.0.

https://thedefiant.io

Cysic and Billions to Make Web3 Bot-Proved and Private

Cysic has partnered with Billions Network to build a hardware-accelerated zero-knowledge identity infrastructure designed to make Web3 bot-resistant and privacy-first at scale.

The collaboration combines Billions’ zero-knowledge identity network, which lets users prove they're human without exposing personal data, with Cysic’s specialized hardware compute network to accelerate proof generation and verification.

Billions will offload ZK proofs to the Cysic network, scaling privacy-preserving identity verification to billions of users without compute bottlenecks.

Together, they aim to support privacy-preserving identity, enabling fairer airdrops, sybil-resistant governance, private portable KYC, and cross-chain identity verification across Web3 applications.

Cysic Partners Up with Billions to Power a Bot Proof, Privacy First Web3 - Decrypt

Trenton, New Jersey, 23rd January 2026, Chainwire

https://decrypt.co

Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

Galaxy Reaffirms Crypto's Role in the AI Agent Economy

In a recent research report, the digital assets manager Galaxy explained how emerging standards like x402 are enabling AI agents to act as autonomous economic actors by using crypto payments (especially stablecoins) to pay for services, data, and compute directly on-chain. This setup allows agents to transact with APIs and other digital resources without traditional payment rails, potentially transforming how software, data access, and machine-native services are monetized.

x402 and related agent-centric protocols could lead to gradual blockchain adoption behind the scenes, particularly for micropayments and API access, while traditional payment systems continue to dominate mainstream commerce.

x402, Agentic Payments and Crypto's Emerging Role in the AI Agent Economy

Payment standards like x402 are designed to make AI agents full-fledged economic actors, pointing to a future where blockchains quietly power applications that do not identify as "crypto."

https://www.galaxy.com

More

OpenAI Gears Up for a Biometric Social Platform

The creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, is allegedly building a new social network, according to Forbes. The project's mission is to tackle the persistent bot problem on major platforms like X, and to that end, it will reportedly use biometric Proof-of-Personhood verification.

The project could employ biometric solutions like Apple's Face ID or World's iris-scanning “World Orb” technology to ensure that every account belongs to a real human rather than an automated bot.

The idea is to create a “real-humans-only” social platform, but there’s no confirmed timeline yet, and privacy advocates warn that using biometric data like iris scans carries risks.

It is worth noting that OpenAI's Sam Altman is a co-founder of World, and the company has faced intense global scrutiny over the risks of personal data misuse in recent years.

Worldcoin Surges 25% as OpenAI Considers its Biometric Technology - "The Defiant"

Open AI is reportedly building its own social network with biometric identity verification.

https://thedefiant.io

It’s also important to note that there are significant doubts about OpenAI’s ability to sustain the massive cloud infrastructure costs its business requires, with many experts characterizing the company as a "money pit." As HSBC estimated in November 2025:

OpenAI needs to raise at least $207bn by 2030 so it can continue to lose money.

In addition, the circular nature of the investments OpenAI regularly raises intensifies the discussions regarding a potential "AI Bubble." Right now, according to Reuters, the AI behemoth is in talks to receive funding from its major hardware supplier, NVIDIA, and one of its main cloud services suppliers, Amazon.

Given this difficult financial situation OpenAI seems to be in, eyeing a new business venture like a social network is not a surprise.

Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon in talks to invest up to $60 billion in OpenAI, The Information reports

Nvidia , Amazon , and Microsoft are ​in talks to invest up to $60 ‌billion in OpenAI, The Information reported on Wednesday.

https://www.reuters.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Ethereum’s First Encrypted ICO Brings $118M to Zama

Zama, the cryptography company pioneering Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) on blockchain, launched its public auction for $ZAMA tokens on Ethereum, raising about $118.5M in commitments.

After several years of development, Zama recently announced its launch on mainnet with the first Confidential USDT (cUSDT) transfer on Ethereum. Over the last few days, the Zama Public Auction became the first production application built on the Zama Protocol, demonstrating real-world usage and scalability.

The auction was conducted as a confidential sealed-bid Dutch auction, meaning participants submitted private bid amounts and public prices, and the final clearing price was calculated directly on encrypted data. This ensured fair price discovery without revealing bid sizes.

Within just three days, the Zama auction was the most-used application on Ethereum by transaction volume, surpassing major apps like Tether.io's USDT, Circle's USDC, and Uniswap Labs, and pushed Total Value Shielded (TVS) above $100M - a milestone other privacy protocols took years to reach.

The sale was 218 % oversubscribed, with 880 million tokens sold at a $0.05 clearing price to over 11,000 unique bidders. Unsold participants can still join an upcoming pre-TGE sale at the auction price, and tokens will be fully unlocked upon distribution, enabling staking and use within the Zama Protocol’s confidential finance ecosystem.

Zama's Public Auction Attracts $118M for Ethereum's First Encrypted ICO - Decrypt

Paris, France, 27th January 2026, Chainwire

https://decrypt.co

FLock.io Launches Full-Cycle DeAI Platform FOMO

FLock.io presented FOMO (FLock Open Model Offering), a launchpad completing its evolution into a full-cycle decentralized AI ecosystem by linking model training, deployment, hosting, and demand.

FOMO enables anyone to launch decentralized AI models, integrate them via the API platform, and receive rewards when the models are used. That way, it democratizes access to AI and undercuts traditional cloud pricing with a franchise-style economy and token incentives. It closes the loop between supply (training and compute) and demand (usage and monetisation).

FOMO’s tokenomics are designed around real AI usage driving economic value. There are two token types:

• $FLOCK: the macro token coordinating incentives across the FLock network, capturing network-wide value and rewarded via usage-based buybacks.

• Model Tokens (MTs): represent individual AI models with fixed supply and direct exposure to usage-driven buybacks and burns. When a model earns inference revenue, portions are used to buy back and burn both $FLOCK and its MT, pay the model owner, and fund operations. This aligns incentives so real usage, not speculation, drives token value and rewards for stakeholders (owners, stakers, users).

Learn more below.

FLock.io Unveils FOMO: An Industry-First 'Franchise' AI Platform To Undercut Big Tech Pricing

FLock.io, a platform for decentralised AI model development, has announced the launch of Flock Open Model Offering (FOMO): an industry-first launchpad for anyone to launch a decentralised AI model and be rewarded with cryptocurrency when it is used. Developers can use the platform to seamlessly integrate the user-generated models into their own applications via a simple API.

https://www.crypto-reporter.com

Nansen Rolls Out Integrated AI Trading on Solana and Base

In a strategic shift from being purely an analytics platform to offering on-chain trade execution, Nansen has recently unveiled an AI-powered, integrated trading solution within its web and mobile apps.

The new feature leverages Nansen’s proprietary dataset of 500M+ labeled wallet addresses to power AI agents that help users discover, analyze, and execute trades across Solana and Base Chain, all in a single interface, without switching platforms.

Users can interact with the system via natural-language commands (“vibe trading”), whereas trades require explicit user approval and use non-custodial wallets. Execution and liquidity routing are provided via partners like Jupiter, OKX DEX, and LI.FI. The launch is available to eligible users now, though access is restricted in certain jurisdictions due to regulatory limits.

Nansen Launches AI Trading Tools on Solana and Base Networks | CoinMarketCap

Users can place trades by entering commands in plain language, according to the announcement.

https://coinmarketcap.com

More

Crypto Crime and Fraud Hit ATH in 2025, Powered by AI, Stablecoins

Unfortunately, the intersection of AI and crypto is not all sunshine and rainbows, and you should be aware of the dangers it hides as well as the advantages it brings. According to a new Chainalysis report, crypto scams and fraud in 2025 reached record levels, with an estimated $17B lost, driven largely by impersonation schemes and AI-enabled fraud.

Scams that incorporate AI tools (like deepfakes, synthetic identities, or automated phishing) reportedly were around 4.5× more profitable than traditional scams, making them a top threat in the crypto space.

The findings indicate a shift from classic cyberattacks toward sophisticated social engineering and AI-assisted schemes, highlighting new challenges for enforcement and users alike.

Chainalysis: Impersonation and AI scams are becoming crypto's biggest threat

Chainalysis estimates scammers stole up to $17B in 2025, as deepfakes and fake "support" accounts fuel a shift away from hacks and toward social engineering.

https://www.coindesk.com

In the meantime, TRM Labs reported that a large share of the illicit cryptocurrency activity, increased by 145% in 2025, was tied to $A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin linked to Russia.

$A7A5 became a dominant conduit for sanctions evasion and other sanctioned economic flows. Overall, stablecoins accounted for about 95% of transaction volume involving sanctioned entities, and $A7A5 alone was responsible for the majority of that activity, highlighting how bespoke crypto tools are being used to circumvent traditional financial restrictions.

Crypto Crime Hit All-Time High in 2025, With Russian Stablecoin Playing Key Role: TRM Labs - Decrypt

Some $158 billion worth of illicit crypto traded last year, and much of that activity came from just one source: a ruble-pegged stablecoin with ties to Russia.

https://decrypt.co

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

I’m launching a new rubric today: The Web3 + AI Interview. Through a series of conversations with builders, innovators, and thought leaders working at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, I’ll explore the key ideas, emerging trends, and narratives shaping the future of technology.

I'm thrilled to welcome my first interviewee: Kapil Dhiman, co-founder and CEO of the Quantum Secure Layer-1 blockchain Quranium. Kapil and I discuss how quantum computing is about to impact blockchains, AI, and privacy tech, and what a financial infrastructure built for longevity should look like.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

Q1: Could you tell us more about how you came up with the idea for Quranium, and what motivated you to embark on this journey of creating a new Layer-1 blockchain?

KD: Quranium emerged from a structural mismatch we couldn’t ignore.

Digital systems were becoming faster, more interconnected, and more valuable, yet the cryptography securing them was designed for a pre-quantum era. At the same time, quantum computing was no longer theoretical. Governments and research institutions were openly acknowledging the “harvest now, decrypt later” risk, where encrypted data collected today will be broken years from now.

What stood out was the industry response. Most solutions focused on incremental upgrades to legacy cryptography rather than questioning whether the foundation itself was still fit for purpose.

We started with a simple question: if you were building financial infrastructure meant to last 30–40 years, what would you trust it to run on?

That question led directly to Quranium, a Layer-1 designed around post-quantum cryptography at the protocol level, where security is treated as a non-negotiable constraint, not a feature to optimize later.

Q2: How would you comment on claims that we still have at least a decade before the quantum threat facing blockchains is realized?

KD: Quantum risk does not begin on a hypothetical “Q-Day.” It begins the moment data is encrypted using schemes that are already on a formal deprecation path.

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) has finalized post-quantum cryptographic standards and has made it clear that today’s widely used public-key encryption is expected to be phased out around the 2030 timeframe. That means systems designed to protect data beyond that horizon are already exposed.

This is why Europol and national cybersecurity agencies are urging institutions to act now. Data encrypted today is expected to remain sensitive for many years, and waiting for full quantum capability before migrating creates an irreversible gap.

Waiting for certainty is not prudence, it is deferral of responsibility. Any system intended to store value, identity, or sensitive data over long periods must be built for the future threat model, not the one we are leaving behind.

Q3: Can you provide an ELI5 explanation of how traditional blockchains’ ECDSA encryption differs from what you’re proposing with SLH-DSA?

KD: Most blockchains today rely on ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm), a digital signature scheme whose security depends on mathematical problems that quantum computers are expected to solve efficiently. When that happens, ECDSA doesn’t gradually weaken, it fundamentally fails.

SLH-DSA (State Less Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm) takes a different approach. Instead of relying on those mathematical assumptions, it uses cryptographic hash functions, which are among the most conservative and well-studied building blocks in cryptography. Even in a quantum world, hash-based schemes retain strong security guarantees.

That’s why SLH-DSA has been standardized by NIST as part of its post-quantum cryptography suite. Quranium adopts this class of signatures at the protocol level so that both account security and consensus remain viable in a post-quantum environment.

The real question is not if the industry will move here, but when and under what conditions.

Q4: Tell us more about Q-REMIX. Are there other AI-enhanced products in the pipeline?

KD: Q-Remix is a quantum-resistant, AI-assisted development environment built specifically for the Quranium ecosystem.

It allows developers to generate, test, and deploy smart contracts with minimal setup, while embedding AI directly into the workflow, from natural-language contract generation to real-time analysis and refinement.

The focus isn’t automation for its own sake, but reducing error and friction in environments where correctness and security are critical.

AI-enhanced functionality will extend across other parts of the ecosystem as well, particularly where complexity, verification, and long-term maintainability intersect, though details will be shared as those tools mature.

Q5: Quantum computing is often discussed as a threat to crypto. How will it impact the AI industry more broadly?

KD: AI systems depend on massive volumes of data, much of it sensitive. If that data is decrypted retrospectively, it can be combined with AI-driven automation to amplify harm: synthetic identity fraud, large-scale social engineering, and highly targeted misinformation.

The real risk lies in the interaction between AI and quantum capability. That’s why quantum-secure infrastructure matters not just for digital assets, but for any future AI system that touches money, identity, or decision-making at scale.

Q6: Many privacy primitives are considered quantum-resistant. How do you expect quantum computing to affect the broader quest for confidentiality?

KD: It’s true that several privacy primitives, such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, are believed to be mathematically resistant to quantum attacks. But confidentiality isn’t defined by individual primitives in isolation.

Most privacy systems still rely on classical cryptography for identity, authentication, and transaction authorization. If those layers become vulnerable, privacy guarantees can be indirectly undermined even if the core mathematics remains intact.

Quantum computing exposes fragility not by breaking privacy tools directly, but by stressing the assumptions around how systems are composed. NIST has been clear that protecting long-term confidentiality requires migrating the entire cryptographic stack.

In a quantum era, privacy can’t be treated as a feature, it has to be an end-to-end property of the system.

Thank you, Kapil Dhiman, for taking the time to talk to me and the Web3 + AI community! It was a pleasure learning more about Quranium, and the future you're envisioning.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Today’s issue breaks with tradition and, instead of covering the latest Crypto x AI updates, it outlines Web3's potential to transform the relationship between creators and audiences.

As part of exploring new ways to monetize my work while also rewarding readers, I recently launched two social tokens: the $WEB3AI writer token and the $ALBENA creator token. This is my first experiment with social tokens, and I’m excited to bring you along for the journey. Let's break down the purpose and tokenomics of each of these tokens.

Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!

Web3 + AI: The Origin Story

I launched The Web3 + AI Newsletter in November 2023 as a weekly bulletin covering the most significant Crypto × AI developments. Over time, I tried out different publication schedules - at times, work and other commitments made it difficult to publish consistently, while more recently, the rapid growth of the Web3 + AI space has pushed me to shift from a weekly cadence to daily publishing.

Yet, the goals I was pursuing with launching the newsletter never changed:

1. Educate audiences on developments at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence, and why they matter.

2. Explain the case for decentralized AI and why its implications for privacy, democracy, media, art, the creator economy, and society at large should concern everyone.

3. Document the evolution of the Web3 + AI movement by tracking its progress, shaping and analyzing its emerging taxonomy, and highlighting the most influential projects in the space.

A Blogger's Trilemma

One of the first, and most important, decisions a digital creator makes is choosing where to publish their content. There are several options, each with clear trade-offs: a social media platform with built-in publishing tools, a dedicated newsletter service integrating various subscription methods, like Substack or Patreon, or an independent website.

Moving from the first option to the third, exposure and community-building features tend to decrease, while opportunities for editorial independence, accessibility, and long-term archiving increase.

I opted to publish my newsletter simultaneously on LinkedIn and on my own website, web3plusai.xyz, hosted by Ghost. This dual-publishing approach may be unconventional, but it’s deliberate. Social media excels at distribution and discovery, yet it is not a reliable or permanent record of one’s work. Platforms evolve, algorithms change, and content can be buried, restricted, or disappear altogether. By publishing on my own site, I ensured long-term preservation and full editorial control, while continuing to use social media as a discovery layer.

To Paywall or Not to Paywall?

Monetization is another major consideration for digital creators. In the traditional Web2 ecosystem, especially for those just starting out, the options are limited. Creators can rely on advertising, which often degrades the reader experience, or introduce paid subscriptions, effectively restricting access to some or all of their content.

From the beginning, my mission with this newsletter has been to expand the number of people who understand the impact of Web3 and AI. For that reason, paywalling the content was never an option. On the contrary, I’ve always intended for it to remain completely free and accessible to everyone.

At the same time, maintaining a daily publication requires significant time and effort, so I wanted to offer readers a simple, frictionless way to support my work through tips or donations. Unfortunately, that proved difficult to implement on Ghost. The available fiat payment providers declined to work with me, and the user experience of their crypto counterparts fell short of expectations.

A Web3 Alternative

That's how I ended up migrating my publication from Ghost to Paragraph - the Web3 publishing hub that revolutionizes blogging, journalism, and creative writing.

Not only does Paragraph secure my content by recording each publication on Arweave's decentralized and permissionless database, but it also offers innovative monetization and community-building tools like writer tokens.

As of 2026, my writing is at its new (old) home on web3plusai.xyz.

How is Web3 Redefining Value in the Creator Economy?

As with many other industries, the creator economy is being fundamentally reshaped by crypto and blockchain technology. Beyond introducing new revenue models for creators and artists, Web3 also enables them to recognize and reward loyalty and early support in ways that were previously impossible.

In this emerging decentralized economy, creators and their audiences can both share in the upside of creative success.

In Web2, audiences are largely treated as passive consumers, earning nothing for supporting a creator on their path to wide popularity. In contrast, Web3 gives readers flexibility: they can spend as much or as little as they choose and receive rewards in return.

Through tools like social tokens, supporters can collect a single publication or purchase a creator's token to back their entire oeuvre across genres, formats, and platforms.

What are Social Tokens?

Social tokens are a type of digital fungible asset (ERC-20), issued by creators, artists, musicians, and influencers to monetize their content and build a Web3 ecosystem.

Social tokens provide companies and individuals with a new way to receive compensation and engage supporters. They help individuals and companies offer rewards for their community’s support, allow fans a voice in the online community, and provide a steady compensation flow for creators. As a fan community grows, early adopters could receive acknowledgments for their loyalty.

Social tokens come in several forms. Creator tokens are tied to an individual creator or brand. Content tokens represent the tokenization of a specific piece of content, like a tweet, a blog post, or a meme. Content tokens are usually linked to their author's creator token.

Tokenomics of $ALBENA and $WEB3AI

As you've probably guessed, $ALBENA is the creator token I've set up on ZORA, and $WEB3AI is the creator token recognizing me as the writer of the Paragraph publication web3plusai.xyz. In addition to those two, every post, article, meme, or gif I publish on either Zora or Paragraph is minted as a separate content token.

All of these different tokens live on Base Chain and feature a distinct tokenomics design.

• All tokens have a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens by default.

• As the creator/author, I receive 50% of the allocated creator tokens and 10% of the allocated content tokens, both on Zora and on Paragraph. The rest of the tokens are immediately available for public trading.

• As the creator/author, I earn a percentage of the fees when my tokens are traded. Any time someone trades my creator or content tokens on Zora, I'll automatically get 1% of the fees, paid out to me in $ZORA tokens. On Paragraph, I'll earn 2% of every transaction involving my writer token, and 0.475% of each buy or sell of my content tokens.

• My tokens will appreciate as my content gains traction.

Readers purchasing a content token would signal that a specific post resonates with them, and they would like to share it with friends and followers. On the other hand, buying a creator token signifies fans' support of a writer across everything they publish, creating a lasting connection between authors and their audience.

A “writer coin” imagines each journalist as their own miniature economy. Instead of subscribing to The New York Times or supporting an entire platform like Substack, readers would invest in the writer themselves. The more popular a writer becomes, the more their coin is worth; the value rises as readership grows, producing financial incentives for quality content and sustained engagement. It is essentially equity in a person instead of a company.

In my personal miniature economy, my $WEB3AI creator token builds value around all of my Paragraph content tokens, whereas $ALBENA represents the umbrella valuation fueled by both $WEB3AI and my Zora posts.

$WEB3AI is the financial representation of my role as the creator of The Web3 + AI Newsletter, whereas $ALBENA symbolizes the financial layer of my personal brand. That's why any future creative endeavor I undertake will be paired with $ALBENA.

A Surprise for my Paragraph Readers

As I noted at the outset, one of the primary reasons I was drawn to launching social tokens was the ability to earn alongside my readers. Thanks to Paragraph, this is now a reality - at the very moment the $WEB3AI token launched, I was able to show my appreciation for the loyalty of my early supporters by rewarding them with tokens.

Yes, you read that correctly - check your wallets.

Every one of my Paragraph subscribers and collectors, Farcaster followers, and Zora holders that has provided a valid address (as of January 16th) was allocated $WEB3AI tokens.

Find the token contract and transaction history here.

Web3 platforms like Paragraph, Zora, and Base App shift control from centralized platforms to creators themselves, allowing them to own their digital work and reward community engagement. The monetization of creative works no longer depends on algorithm changes and policy shifts - another real-life win for the crypto movement.

I have finally found an easy, seamless way to enable readers and subscribers to become backers. The bonus here is that I can share my success with everyone who has supported me along the way. Thank you for being part of my journey!

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Dear community,

Happy New Year 🥳 I'm grateful to have welcomed another new year in your company. May 2026 bring you peace, joy, prosperity, and a bunch of exciting adventures!

The Web3 + AI Newsletter has officially migrated from Ghost to Paragraph, and you can now find the publication at its new (old) address web3plusai.xyz.

Key Web3 + AI Events of 2025

Ethereum Foundation's dAI Team and "Trustless Agents"

In October 2025, the Ethereum Foundation doubled down on decentralized AI by launching a dedicated dAI team, led by Davide Crapis and aimed at making Ethereum the primary settlement and coordination layer for the emerging AI agent economy. Central to this effort is ERC-8004, a “Trustless Agents” standard that enables AI agents to discover, verify, build reputation, and transact with one another without pre-existing trust.

Developed as a cross-industry collaboration involving Ethereum, Google, MetaMask, and others, ERC-8004 complements Google’s Agent-to-Agent (A2A) and Agent Payments (A2P) protocols while addressing their trust limitations. The initiative positions Ethereum as uniquely suited to power agentic commerce by providing native payment rails, identity, and trust infrastructure - capabilities missing from existing AI frameworks.

Could Ethereum Become the Preferred Settlement and Coordination Layer for AI Agents?

A new Ethereum Foundation team will focus on payments, trust and standards for AI agents, linking protocol upgrades with decentralized infrastructure development.

https://www.coindesk.com

Coinbase's x402 Payment Protocol

2025 was a spectacular year for agentic payments, with Coinbase introducing x402, a new open protocol that makes stablecoin micropayments a native part of web interactions.

This lets apps, services, and AI agents automatically execute on-chain payments for access to APIs, data, or services without accounts, subscriptions, or middlemen, unlocking true machine-to-machine commerce and pay-per-use monetization.

The initiative quickly gained industry support from partners like Circle, NEAR Protocol, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Cloudflare , which helped establish the x402 Foundation to govern and advance the standard.

Adoption surged as the protocol expanded beyond Coinbase’s Base Chain to multiple EVM networks and Solana, driving rapid transaction growth and ecosystem interest. However, challenges remain before it can fully power a mature machine economy, and further infrastructure (like trust, discovery, and quality services) is still developing.

The Stellar Leap of Coinbase's x402

The Web3 + AI Newsletter

Oct 29, 2025

The Web3 + AI Inquiry digs into the burning questions steering dAI and the open machine economy. Today, we're asking: what's all the buzz about x402?

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Bittensor's dTAO Upgrade and Halving

In 2025, the open-source AI network Bittensor performed not one, but two pivotal economic overhauls. First, the Dynamic TAO upgrade was enacted, followed by the first-ever $TAO halving event.

dTAO, or dynamic TAO, marks a major change in Bittensor's tokenomics by giving each of the network's specialized subnets its own token, paired with TAO in a dedicated liquidity pool.

Instead of subnets competing for a shared TAO reward and relying on a single group of validators to rank them, each subnet’s value now rises or falls based on genuine demand via the users, stakers, and validators who adopt it.

Bittensor's Huge Upgrade on Bankless

dTAO is here, and it's set to be a game changer for the Bittensor ecosystem.

https://www.bankless.com

In mid-December, Bittensor’s first token halving reduced daily $TAO emissions from 7,200 to 3,600, and aligned the protocol with Bitcoin-style scarcity mechanics.

The halving shook up the network’s subnet ecosystem: with fewer emissions available, capital and rewards now flow toward higher-performing subnets, while weaker or “zombie” subnets struggle for liquidity or become inactive.

Additionally, mining and validator rewards tightened, potentially leading to consolidation among the most efficient participants. Supporters argue this will strengthen the network’s economic health over time, even if short-term volatility persists.

Bittensor's first halving seen to boost TAO price and starve 'zombie subnets'

Bittensor's first halving is set to take place on December 14. Investors hope it will boost the TAO token's price. The reduced rewards will also impact the network's subnets and miners.

https://www.dlnews.com

Crypto Treasuries On The Rise

In 2025, digital asset treasuries (DATs), where public companies hold cryptocurrencies as core balance-sheet assets, shifted from niche experiments to a mainstream corporate finance trend. Major firms expanded beyond Bitcoin to include Ethereum and even dAI coins in their treasuries, generating billions in net inflows and signaling widespread institutional adoption.

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) remained the largest holder, with over $62B in BTC, while new players like BitMine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink (SBET), Ether Machine (ETHM), and Forward Industries (Nasdaq: FWDI) amassed significant crypto holdings. Meanwhile, in the dAI vertical, TAO Synergies Inc. and Synaptogenix bet on Bittensor's $TAO token, and Predictive Oncology launched a $344M Aethir DAT.

This evolution was supported by clearer regulations, easier capital access, and confidence in digital assets as stores of value. However, heavy concentration of DATs among a few firms and associated risks, such as volatility and investor scrutiny, highlight ongoing challenges. The next stage for DATs is to generate yield and integrate digital assets into real operational use cases like staking, settlement, and liquidity management, rather than merely stockpiling tokens. Learn more here.

BTC Mining vs. AI / HPC Data Centers

Over the past year, I've covered the same piece of news over and over again - the only thing that changed was the protagonists. With BTC mining rewards declining and demand for AI computing resources growing incessantly, miners were gradually shifting to AI and HPC (high-performance computing) operations, seeking higher profits and less uncertainty.

What's more, those who made the switch performed better financially: IREN emerged as the top performer with roughly +300% year-to-date gains, driven by major GPU cloud deals and support from Microsoft. Other AI-focused miners like Cipher Mining and Hut 8 also posted strong returns, buoyed by AI hosting partnerships and large data-center projects.

By contrast, traditional Bitcoin-heavy miners lagged: Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) saw its stock fall about 50%, affected by a larger-than-expected Q3 loss and delays in ASIC chip development, while peers like Marathon Digital experienced declines without significant AI diversification. The trend highlights how miners leveraging AI/HPC demand have outperformed pure-play crypto mining operations in 2025.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining in 2025: Winners and laggards emerge as IREN leads and BTDR falls behind

Diversification into AI and HPC infrastructure drove sharp outperformance for miners, while pure-play bitcoin miners lagged.

https://www.coindesk.com

Now, with its 2026 energy forecast, BlackRock warns of a looming energy clash between AI data centers and Bitcoin miners. The company highlights that AI-driven infrastructure could consume a very large share of U.S. electricity in the coming years, potentially reshaping how power is allocated across industries.

Bitcoin mining has traditionally competed for cheap, flexible energy by absorbing surplus generation and curtailing during peak demand, but AI workloads require constant, reliable baseload power, which could squeeze miners’ access to favorable grid capacity and elevate energy costs. As grid constraints tighten, miners may have to adapt by integrating more closely with utility planning or pivoting toward AI/HPC hosting services, changing the competitive landscape for energy-intensive tech sectors.

The question remains: what will happen with Bitcoin when all of its major miners pivot to AI?

BlackRock warns crypto's love affair with AI is over as an energy war with Bitcoin miners begins

BlackRock warns AI data centers could use up to 25% of US electricity by 2030. What it means for miners, grid flexibility, and cheap power.

https://cryptoslate.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

Aztec Generates $61.3M From Innovative Public Sale

Aztec completed a public sale of its $AZTEC token from December 2–6, 2025, raising about $61.3M (19,476 ETH). About half of the 16,700 participants in the sale were community members, existing users, testnet operators, and legacy ecosystem participants, rather than big institutions.

The sale used a novel auction method called the Continuous Clearing Auction (CCA), built in collaboration with Uniswap Labs, intended to provide fairer access and transparent price discovery compared to the traditional airdrops or insider-heavy launch models.

The auction began at a floor price tied to a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of $350 M, a 75% discount compared to previous equity valuations. Tokens will remain locked until at least February 11, 2026, when token holders can vote on a generation event; otherwise, they unlock gradually through November 2026.

Aztec’s privacy-focused Ethereum Layer-2 network Ignition Chain, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable private transactions, is live, positioning the project as a major player in privacy-native blockchain infrastructure. One of Aztec's major achievements consists in providing a viable and easy-to-use digital identity solution, vital for every digital interaction in the post-AI era.

Aztec Network Raises $61M in Community-First Token Sale | CoinMarketCap

The auction format was designed to prevent front-running and timing games that often plague token launches.

https://coinmarketcap.com

DeepNode AI Raises $5M Across 2 Rounds to Build DeAI Infra

DeepNode AI, a start-up building a decentralized AI infrastructure, has raised $5M across two funding rounds: a $2M community-supported seed round (valuation ~$25M) and a $3M strategic round (valuation ~$75M). The strategic round was backed by Blockchain Founders Fund, Side Door Ventures, tbv, IOBC Capital, FOMO Ventures, and Nestoris.

The funds will support DeepNode’s plan to launch an “open intelligence network”, a decentralized platform where AI developers, compute-providers and validators collaborate without centralized corporate control. Contributors are meant to earn rewards for real-world utility of their AI work.

DeepNode intends to launch its mainnet by the end of the Q1 2026. The network is being built on Base Chain, aiming for low-cost scalability and enabling use in many domains, from healthcare diagnostics to finance, fraud detection, trading, and more.

DeepNode Secures $5 Million Across Seed & Strategic Rounds to Build Open Intelligence Network - Decrypt

Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 5th December 2025, Chainwire

https://decrypt.co

TrueNorth Collects $3M to Specialize AI for Finance

The AI engine for crypto investors TrueNorth secured $3M in a pre-seed funding round to build specialized AI for finance. The round was led by CyberFund, with participation from Delphi Digital, SNZ Capital, GSR, and Ocular VC.

The company aims to create what it calls the “reasoning layer for financial intelligence,” domain-specific AI that’s trained for trading and investment tasks, avoiding the hallucinations and mistakes generic AI models make in fast-moving markets. By encoding professional traders’ workflows into structured playbooks and fusing real-time market data with proprietary models, TrueNorth hopes to deliver accurate, context-aware insights and execution-ready recommendations.

TrueNorth aims to fill the gap between AI’s theoretical promise and real-world financial performance. If successful, its “financial-grade” AI could help both professional and retail investors navigate markets with more reliability. The company's public beta version already has tens of thousands of users on its waiting list.

TrueNorth raises $3m to build domain-specific AI for finance

TrueNorth has raised $3M to build specialized financial intelligence designed to close the gap between generative AI's capabilities and its real-world performance in trading and investment contexts

https://cointelegraph.com

ZENi Secures $1.5M to Grow the Intelligence Data Layer for AI Agents

ZENi secured $1.5M in a seed funding round, led by Waterdrip Capital and Mindfulness Capital, with additional investment from Rootz Lab, Attention Ventures, DePIN X Capital and MetaLabs Ventures.

ZENi’s platform, called the “InfoFi Data Layer”, processes over 1 million daily signals from social platforms (like X, Telegram, Discord) and blockchain (on-chain activity), converting them into structured, machine-readable intelligence. It can then be used by AI agents to understand user intent, detect emerging narratives and timing windows, generate adaptive content, trigger outreach, and optimize execution loops.

With the new funding, ZENi intends to accelerate development of its data-intelligence backbone and scale its offering. On top of the data layer, ZENi also offers “AI Sales Agents” that automate marketing and growth workflows, using the processed data to drive outreach and client acquisition, aiming to power what they call the “InfoFi Economy.”

ZENi Raises $1.5 Million Seed Round to Power the Intelligence Data Layer for AI Agents - BlockTelegraph

Singpore, Singapore, 20th November 2025, Chainwire

https://blocktelegraph.io

More

Trump Omits Crypto in National Security Strategy

The newly released 2025 United States National Security Strategy (NSS) under Donald Trump makes no explicit mention of Bitcoin, blockchain, or digital-asset technologies. Instead, the strategy highlights artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, and quantum computing as the core technologies that will define U.S. technological leadership going forward.

The silence on crypto and blockchain is striking given the administration’s previous pro-crypto gestures, such as backing legislation for stablecoins, endorsing a “digital finance” agenda, and establishing a federal “strategic Bitcoin reserve.” By omitting digital assets from the NSS, the government sends a signal that crypto is viewed more as a financial or commercial tool rather than a strategic national-security asset or technological priority.

Some analysts view this as a disconnect between rhetoric and strategy: despite public support and pro-crypto policy moves, crypto isn’t elevated to the level of strategic concern. In any case, I believe it is high time we realized that under Trump, any federal support or lack thereof is purely transactional.

Trump Administration Overlooks Bitcoin, Blockchain in National Security Strategy

President Trump's latest national security strategy omits digital assets, focusing instead on AI, biotech, and quantum computing.

https://www.coindesk.com

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out to me on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted, rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to create a fruitful discussion.

This is The Web3 + AI Newsletter, your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI)! As we're approaching the time of year when the news cycle is getting quieter and everyone starts sharing their annual retrospective, I'm excited to shed some light on a rather hot topic: privacy.

Crypto is finally experiencing a privacy renaissance - a return to its cypherpunk roots. Over the past few months alone, the price of Zcash, a privacy-protecting digital currency, grew by over 600%, Ethereum Foundation made a major commitment to improving privacy across the Ethereum ecosystem, and privacy-focused projects like Zama and Aztec announced token launches.

In a series of articles, I'll go through all you need to know about the state of privacy tech in crypto and how it may affect Web3 + AI. Today, I'll answer two burning questions: why privacy and why now, along with breaking down Ethereum's strategy for supercharging confidentiality.

Why Privacy?

As many of you know, blockchains come with inherent transparency. Each transaction, smart contract and wallet balance are open for everyone on the Internet to see. While this feature has been quite useful historically, even indispensable, it's becoming a liability for an industry striving to attract legacy financial actors and capital. Here's what I mean exactly.

Public blockchains expose data because public verifiability require it. Blockchains create a transparent, tamper-proof record that's constantly validated by network nodes, enabling instant, reliable checks to ensure data integrity and fraud prevention. To make that possible, anyone willing to verify needs to be able to recompute the state of the chain. Additionally, when early blockchain protocols were created, the technology to keep data private while still allowing public verification simply didn’t exist.

However, personal and corporate finances are a delicate piece of information that few of us would voluntarily share with the world. For an industry fighting to offer a viable alternative to the traditional financial system, a lack of privacy is simply pernicious.

Why Now?

The crypto industry needs fresh influx of capital to grow and develop. Up until recently, the lack of clear regulation and the threat of state prosecution kept big financial and banking institutions at bay. Now that major markets like the US and the EU started adoption clearer regulatory regimes, privacy emerges as the next frontier crypto has to cross.

What's more, now the stakes are higher — 2025 was a key year for real assets integration and institutional involvement in crypto. With crypto and TradFi getting ever more intertwined, privacy starts to play an even greater role.

Why Should I Care About Privacy?

The idea of introducing privacy to crypto isn't new - it's been a part of the space since its inception. In fact, early cypherpunks envisioned digital money as a tool for financial freedom and self-sovereignty, of one having ultimate control over one's wealth, data, and identity. Privacy-centered projects have been around for years - Zcash, for example, was founded in 2016. Yet, none of them has been backed by particularly strong demand by users.

The truth is, regular customers rarely care about privacy. Only when faced with the consequences of their personal data getting leaked or exposed do people start taking notice. And that is not specific to financial use cases, but concerns any digital service in existence.

In reality, demand emerges and norms quickly shift when the lack of privacy cause actual damages. One prominent example is messaging: none of us cared about our online communication being encrypted before witnessing major data leaks that sent people to prison. Then, tools like Telegram Messenger and Signal Messenger appeared and made people realize they can have privacy without compromising functionality or ease of use.

The same will happen with crypto.

Ethereum's Privacy Strategy

In October, the Ethereum Foundation published a blog post with which it positioned privacy as a key principle for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Ethereum was created to be the foundation of digital trust, one that is worthy of civilizational scale. For that trust to remain credible, privacy must be part of its core, the EF, along with dozens of Ethereum teams focused on privacy, are proud to support this cause.

The post defines privacy as “the freedom to choose what you share, when you share it, and who you share it with,” and formalizes Ethereum's strategy to achieve those. The goal? Turning privacy into a first-class property:

Privacy deserves to be a first-class property of the Ethereum ecosystem, and we are committed to working alongside the ecosystem to make that a reality for individuals and institutions alike.

The Ethereum Foundation's Commitment to Privacy | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Privacy is for everyone

https://blog.ethereum.org

The State of Privacy On Ethereum

Many privacy-focused crypto projects (~700+) already exist, as between 200 and 300 teams are building privacy on Ethereum on all layers of the stack. The long-standing PSE (Privacy Stewards of Ethereum) has developed 50+ open-source R&D privacy projects, including:

• Semaphore: anonymous signaling.

• MACI: private voting.

• zkEmail, TLSNotary (zkTLS), and Anon Aadhaar (private ID/identity).

PSE started as a separate organization years ago, although it's always been supported by the EF. As part of EF's renewed efforts this year, PSE now focus exclusively on Ethereum and is led by Andy G..

The Privacy Cluster & IPTF

The EF expands privacy efforts via a newly created Privacy Cluster, coordinated by cryptographer Igor Barinov. The cluster brings together 47 researchers, engineers, and cryptographers across the blockchain industry. New initiatives under the cluster include:

• Private Reads & Writes: enabling private payments, votes, interactions on-chain without metadata leaks.

• Private Proving: portable, efficient proofs to verify identity, eligibility, or assets without oversharing.

• Private Identities / zkID: selective disclosure of identity data for on-chain use.

• Privacy Experience (UX): improving usability, so privacy feels normal and accessible.

• Kohaku: a privacy-preserving wallet and open-source SDK aimed at making strong cryptography usable by default.

Another key team within PSE and the cluster is the Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF), a multidisciplinary group to translate regulatory and operational needs of institutions into privacy specs and real-world use cases. IPTF is led by Oskar Thorén and functions in close collaboration with Ethereum's enterprise team.

Andy and Oscar commented that so many teams in the ecosystem are working on privacy, that it's now mainly a matter of adoption. Check out their conversation with Laura Shin to learn more.

In 6 to 12 months, Ethereum will have the private transaction problem solved for Layer-1 transactions.

Full-Stack Privacy

As Vitalik Buterin emphasized during his Ethereum Roadmap talk at Devconnect, as useful as blockchains are, they're not good for privacy on their own. Gladly, they can be combined with other tech and gadgets to achieve privacy.

When people hear about privacy, the first thing they think about is protecting data on-chain, but the real picture is much bigger and complex. It may include protecting your data from RPC nodes you're getting your data from, network-level privacy, privacy for voting, privacy in DeFi, and more.

Accordingly, different technologies and tools will go into guaranteeing each one of these. What's more, given that the EF envisions privacy at every layer of the stack, including protocol, application, and institutional layer, it's to be expected that such a push will require many cryptography and hardware solutions working together. This slide from Vitalik's presentation speaks volumes.

What concrete privacy-preserving technologies I'm talking about? Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), Multi-Party Computation (MPC), and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), to mention just the main ones. I'll dedicate the next article from this series to explaining each one in more detail, so stay tuned.

What's Next?

The building blocks for privacy on Ethereum are already in place. Now, the focus is on scaling and deploying them at ecosystem scale (developers, apps, institutions).

The Ethereum Foundation’s commitment to privacy rests on a simple principle: credible neutrality, security, and openness are much more valuable to humanity when paired with privacy.

With privacy becoming normal, Ethereum aims to unlock new use cases — private payments, identity verification, governance, enterprise adoption, while preserving trust, neutrality, and openness.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out to me on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted, rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to create a fruitful discussion.