AI Is Reshaping the Internet, and Crypto May Be the Only Force Keeping It Open: a16z

As generative AI reshapes how people search, learn, code, and create, it is also accelerating a quiet but profound shift beneath the surface of the web. 

The open internet — once governed by hyperlinks, search engines, and ad-driven distribution — is rapidly collapsing into a handful of chat interfaces and algorithmic feeds. In this world, where AI models mediate nearly every interaction, the question is becoming unavoidable: Who will own the next internet — centralized AI giants, or the users themselves?

A new analysis from a16z crypto argues that blockchain networks may be the only viable counterweight to the power concentration already happening across AI systems. Their report outlines 11 emerging use cases where crypto and AI intersect — not as abstract speculation, but as technologies already being tested, deployed, and in some cases adopted at scale.

What emerges is a picture of an AI-driven internet that can either become a labyrinth of paywalls and closed platforms — or a more open, interoperable ecosystem anchored by user-owned infrastructure.

Emerging Use Cases Where Crypto and AI Intersect

A Future Where AI Remembers, Without Being Locked In

Generative AI thrives on context: understanding your identity, preferences, projects, writing style, and work history. 

But today, that context is trapped inside proprietary chat windows. Every time a user switches platforms — from ChatGPT to Claude, Copilot, or a custom enterprise bot — their digital memory resets.

A16z argues that blockchains enable a radical shift: persistent AI context stored as digital assets that travel with the user. This could reshape gaming, personalized learning, developer tools, and professional workflows. Instead of companies owning your AI history, users could store — and even monetize — their unique knowledge graphs.

In practice, that could birth marketplaces where expertise, prompts, or personal “context modules” are rented, licensed, or traded — all while users maintain custody of their data.

Agents Need Passports, Too

As AI agents begin to handle tasks across email, messaging, payments, logistics, and internal business systems, they need a portable identity layer — a “passport” that proves who they are, who they represent, and what they’re allowed to do.

Without a shared identity standard, each ecosystem becomes a walled garden. Crypto-native identity solves this by giving agents wallets, verifiable reputations, changelogs, and open registries of capabilities — portable across platforms, protocols, and applications. It breaks the dependency on centralized intermediaries and removes the lock-in effect that Big Tech currently enjoys.

Proof of Humanity Becomes Critical

With deepfakes, automated comment swarms, bot-driven political manipulation, and AI-generated dating profiles already proliferating, distinguishing humans from machines is becoming essential infrastructure.

Decentralized proof-of-personhood systems — such as World ID or emerging attestation protocols on Solana — give users portable, privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant ways to prove they’re human.

The a16z crypto report predicts that as more apps adopt the same identity standard, network effects will rapidly accelerate adoption.

DePIN: Decentralizing the Hardware Behind AI

AI’s meteoric rise is bottlenecked by a very real constraint: compute. 

GPUs remain scarce, centralized, and expensive. DePIN — decentralized physical infrastructure networks — offer a way to pool unused chips, idle gaming PCs, and data-center compute into open, permissionless marketplaces.

Those networks could support training, fine-tuning, or inference at far lower cost — while making AI infrastructure harder to censor.

The Coming Agent Economy

At some point, AIs will communicate more with each other than with humans. Booking flights, running simulations, generating marketing materials, or executing financial actions already require multi-agent workflows — but those workflows today are mostly closed, proprietary, and ad-hoc.

Blockchains can standardize agent-to-agent transactions, payments, and permissions, making it possible for agents from different ecosystems to interact safely. Firms like Halliday, Catena, Skyfire, and Nevermind are already building these rails.

Fixing the Chaos of Vibe-Coded Apps

AI-assisted coding has unleashed a wave of custom micro-apps, but it also creates fragmentation: two apps built with the same prompt may behave completely differently.

A16z says blockchain-based synchrony layers could act like dynamic, shared standards that keep these apps interoperable, secure, and up-to-date — incentivizing developers to maintain and improve the protocols they rely on.

Micropayments and the Rebuilt Economics of the Web

If AI replaces traditional search traffic, publishers risk losing the revenue oxygen that keeps the open web alive. A16z suggests a new economic model where every AI-driven action that leads to value triggers tiny onchain payments to the sources that informed it.

With protocol-enforced micropayments, attribution systems, and automated revenue splits, the web could shift from extraction to participation — reviving creator incentives.

IP Registries for the AI Era

As generative models remix and regenerate content at near-infinite scale, traditional copyright systems are breaking down. Public, programmable blockchains offer registries where creators can prove ownership, license derivative uses, and monetize downstream remixes.

That infrastructure is already forming through networks like Story Protocol and applications like Neura and Titles.

Pay-As-You-Crawl: Making Web Scrapers Contribute

Half of all internet traffic now comes from bots — and the costs are borne by websites, not crawlers. A blockchain-enabled negotiation layer could force AI scrapers to pay sites for access while granting humans free entry.

It flips the economics of data collection and compensates creators at the point of ingestion.

Privacy-Preserving Ads That Don’t Feel Predatory

AI should make ads useful — not creepy. 

Combined with crypto, ads could be tailored to user-defined preferences without exposing personal data, according to a16z. Users could even get paid for engaging with ads via micropayments enforced by smart contracts.

AI Companions — Owned by Users, Not Corporations

As AI companions evolve from tools to relationships — tutoring children, aiding mental health, or providing daily interaction — ownership becomes existential. Blockchain-backed identity, storage, and compute layers offer a path to user-controlled companions that can’t be censored, altered, or deleted by corporate platforms.

The throughline of a16z’s analysis is clear: AI is rewiring the internet, but crypto gives users a way to own the wiring. Whether that leads to a more open web — or deeper corporate control — depends on how quickly decentralized infrastructure can scale, and whether developers embrace protocols over platforms.

The battle for the next internet has already begun.