OKG Research Outlook for 2024: Web3 and AI Integration Ignites a Trusted Digital Society

By Hedy Bi, OKG Research

In the year 2024, OKG Research focuses on exploring the potential of a trusted digital society built through the integration of AI and Web3 technologies. The following points are proposed:

1. The integration of AI and Web3 technologies breaks the limitations in establishing a trusted digital society. The integration of AI and Web3 technologies is expected to address the scalability and security issues of Web3, providing a superior user experience and potentially altering user behaviour in the future use of Web3.
2. Web3 empowers AI, combining forces to address societal challenges. The integration of both technologies will effectively tackle issues such as trust, scalability, and security in the digital society, collectively shaping a reliable digital environment.
3. The introduction of AI Agents and GenAI in Web3 will foster a digitally creative society with overflowing intelligence and creativity. Individuals will gain more power and unleash their creativity, crafting their own Metaverse and ushering in a golden age of global creativity. Users can utilise Gen AI and Web3 to build their own Metaverse, unleashing creativity. This marks a milestone in humanity’s redefinition of creation, sharing, and connectivity.
4. The integration of AI and Web3 technologies will liberate Web3 from its niche status, returning it to a “people-centric” approach and is poised for widespread adoption from the user side. AI Agents reduce the entry barriers for Web3 users, while GenAI inspires user content creation, lowering the creative costs in Metaverse.

“AI is about to completely change how you use computers and upend the software industry,” Bill Gates wrote in an article that garnered widespread attention last November.

This reminds me of a few years ago when blockchain technology was beginning to be widely discussed, and people often used the term “disrupt” to describe the potential of blockchain. Looking back over the past few years, blockchain technology has evolved from its initial native innovations, such as ERC20, zero-knowledge proofs, and BRC20, to gradually integrating with other fields, including DeFi and DePIN.

What if the combination of AI and Web3 creates an effect greater than the sum of its parts?

Last year, we proposed that super apps would be the key to widespread adoption. This year, OKG Research sets its sights on the integration of AI and Web3. With the support of regulatory compliance, this integration has the potential to change user behaviour in the current Web3 landscape, accelerating widespread adoption and jointly constructing a trusted digital society.

Scalable Trust: The Foundation of a Trusted Digital Society

In a network society filled with misinformation, Web3 has long been expected to evolve into a new value platform ecosystem, overturning the information platform of Web2. Imagine a platform where information flow is no longer threatened by misleading and tampering. Economic activities become fairer and more transparent on this value network platform, with onchain data clearly revealing the value chain behind each transaction, eliminating the opaqueness of value circulation.

However, this development has been constrained by the decentralisation, security, and scalability triad, forming an impossible triangle. With scalability, it is easier to establish this new value platform. However, the introduction of AI holds the potential to break this impossible triangle, driving Web3 to establish a scalable and trusted digital society.

Regarding scalability, the current Web3 ecosystem includes hundreds of blockchains, layer2 networks, and application layers. However, due to the lack of native communication capabilities with external systems, many “information islands” have formed. Technologies such as cross-chain bridges, atomic swaps, relay chains, and sidechains have been proposed as solutions. However, these solutions are not easily accessible to the general user. By introducing intelligent agents with autonomous decision-making and execution capabilities, known as AI Agents, they simulate and play human roles, selecting the most suitable cross-chain solutions based on user needs, breaking the “information islands” between different blockchains and providing users with a better cross-chain experience.

From a security perspective, AI can assist in enhancing the security of Web3 systems. AI can promptly detect and address potential security threats through real-time monitoring and analysis, effectively safeguarding users’ assets and privacy. In addition to utilising AI as an efficiency tool, such as accelerating code audits and enhancing security reviews during code writing to improve efficiency, the blockchain large language model proposed by Berkeley RDI is a new direction that has gained extensive attention in the academic community. It aims to provide an infinite search space, free from predefined rules or patterns, enabling direct detection of a broader range of anomalies.

Source: Berkeley RDI

Technology Fusion Empowers AI Trust

To build a trusted digital society, not only does Web3 need scalability and security, but what if AI behaves maliciously? A survey initiated by Ernst & Young showed that in surveyed enterprises, 90% are still in the early stages of AI maturity, with only 4% reaching the most advanced stage. Low trust and concerns about the potential risks of artificial intelligence have become major obstacles to accelerating AI adoption.

Low trust comes from two main aspects: one is that the information used to train AI is incorrect, and the other is that the information used to train AI is centralised and manipulable. However, Web3 technology has significant benefits in increasing the trustworthiness of AI:

1. Web3 technology, with the notarisation function of the blockchain, can help combat misinformation in AI training. For example, content developers can use hashing (Note 1) operations on articles or videos, similar to creating digital fingerprints, to ensure each piece of content is unique. Subsequently, digital fingerprints are recorded on the blockchain and signed using a public key, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of the content.
2. Integration of AI and Web3 technologies will provide new avenues for improving privacy and data ownership. Through blockchain technology, decentralised data storage and management are offered, giving users control and visibility over their data. This provides an alternative solution for large-scale cloud development, reducing the monopoly of centralised cloud service providers. In the future, some centralised cloud service providers may choose to collaborate with the Web3 ecosystem to integrate new technologies and services.
3. Once the fundamental technological limitations are improved under the integration of Web3 and AI technologies, the foundation for establishing a trusted digital society will be laid. A Web3 with scalability will empower individuals with greater authority. In the application layer surrounding individual economies, the combined applications of Web3 and AI will present infinite potential. In this new ecosystem, individuals can directly participate in economic activities, exercising more rights over their data and assets. Through AI-assisted smart contracts, digital identities, and other technologies, everyone can participate in innovative business models, fostering a more just and transparent economic system. This new economic model will drive the development of creativity and personalisation, offering society more opportunities and fairness.

Let Web3 Return to a “People-Centric” Approach

The user experience of Web3 and AI is vastly different. While GenAI-built large language models, such as ChatGPT, have gained immense popularity, attracting the first million users in just five days, Web3 adoption still needs to improve despite there being a range of professional and leading products and platforms. Although regulatory drives in 2023 increased institutional recognition, it has not exploded as rapidly as ChatGPT did on the user side.

User experience is a crucial reason for the disparity in Web3 and AI adoption rates on the user side. Compared to the operation of “users only need to input dialogue” in AI, understanding Web3 wallets and familiarising oneself with addresses different from bank card numbers, keys, etc., poses challenges regarding interaction, speed, and usability. However, introducing AI can effectively improve this user experience, complementing Web3 and potentially becoming a major user of Web3.

By introducing AI Agents at the application layer, the tedious processes can be designed by AI Agents in the background and presented and interacted with in a way familiar to users in the foreground. For example, AI Agents simplify the process in areas where timeliness differs from traditional finance or Web2, such as using digital signatures for crypto proof. Using a private key known to the creator to generate a signature and verifying it using a public key.

By introducing AI Agents, the barriers to entry for Web3 are lowered, allowing Web3 to return to a “people-centric” approach. With the addition of AI, Web3 can continue the application experience of Web2, or even, as Bill Gates said, disrupt the software industry, changing human usage habits and lifestyles.

In the future, users may only need an accurate question or instruction when using a DApp.

Individuals as Teams: Unleashing Human Creativity through the Synergy of AI and Web3

In addition to increasing DApp usability and lowering the entry barriers for ordinary users, GenAI technology is another boost for Web3 adoption on the user side. From the initial text-based Midjourney to the current video generation, such as Runaway and PIKA, GenAI provides users a fast and low-cost way to realise their imagination. In previous fields such as Metaverse and GameFi, the biggest challenge in product development was not code-related but involved aspects such as art, game design, and character setting.

The fusion of GenAI and Web3 technology will accelerate the Metaverse significantly. Web3 provides different incentives for character relationships, especially in games, connecting the game with the outside world, improving operational efficiency, and forming its economic system. AI provides the Metaverse with the rapidity and diversity of virtual creation and content generation. In addition to images, videos, and audio, users can use GenAI to create intelligent NPCs and virtual characters, making the interactivity and immersion of the Metaverse more realistic. For GameFi, the generation and design of game content can also leverage GenAI technology, enabling developers to quickly create game props, scenes, and characters, providing a personalised gaming experience. These applications make the fields of Metaverse and GameFi more creative and attractive.

And all of this allows an individual to be a team. Fusing the two technologies can free up human energy for “how to do it,” unleashing human creativity. In the future, the deep integration of Web3 and AI will give birth to a more intelligent and innovative digital society. Individuals will become creators and artists, coupled with the greater power given by Web3 to individuals. Creativity can freely burst forth without a large team, ushering in a golden age of global invention. Everyone can shape their own Metaverse. This future is not only about technology but also a milestone in humanity’s redefinition of creation, sharing, and connectivity.

The future we anticipate: Trust issues will gradually be resolved, user experience will become more user-friendly, and individuals will be endowed with more power and efficiency tools. Imagine such a digital world; it will redefine our way of life. In 2024, the integration of AI and Web3 will undoubtedly become the dual engines of the trusted digital era, unleashing the unlimited potential of each individual.

Note 1: Hashing is an algorithm that converts data of any length into a fixed-length string. The hash function maps input data to a fixed-length hash value, which is usually unique. Different inputs produce different hash values, and this transformation process is one-way, meaning it is impossible to reverse the hash value to retrieve the original input data.

OKG Research aims at outputing in-depth analysis and professional content which covers topics such as technology application and innovation, technology and social evolution, and financial technology challenges. It is committed to promoting the application and sustainable development of digital technologies such as blockchain, cybersecurity, RegTech etc.

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