Preface:
Since the birth of Bitcoin, the Crypto industry has roughly experienced three revolutions.
A revolution is a disruption of the past, creating new paradigms and new species that have never existed before.
Each revolution in Crypto history has greatly propelled the development of the industry and brought about a sustained explosive growth cycle.
In this current cycle (2022-2025), we are at the end of the third Crypto revolution and on the eve of the fourth revolution's outbreak. Therefore, we see a rather awkward Crypto cycle: the entire industry lacks significant innovation, and the whole cycle is merely consuming the leftovers of the third Crypto revolution. Although some people have already glimpsed the vague outline of the fourth Crypto revolution, everything seems dull and bleak on the eve of the revolution.
This article will discuss the three revolutions in Crypto history and focus on exploring the fourth revolution in Crypto, as well as the tremendous impact it will have on the entire industry. I believe that after reading this article, you will once again be filled with anticipation and hope for the future of Crypto.
Main Text:
The first revolution in Crypto erupted on January 3, 2009, the birthday of Bitcoin.
The birth of Bitcoin was a revolution against traditional asset forms. Bitcoin allowed humanity to possess assets that are completely autonomous and not controlled by any third party for the first time.
Bitcoin opened the Crypto era, marking the first revolution in Crypto history.
In the years following Bitcoin's birth, many altcoins (later collectively referred to as altcoins) emerged, issued through forking Bitcoin's code, such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and many lesser-known altcoins like Feathercoin, Dotcoin, Namecoin, etc. However, these were merely simple imitations and copies of Bitcoin, lacking any innovation.
It wasn't until six years later that Ethereum introduced smart contracts to the blockchain, allowing the blockchain to be used not only for transfer payments but also for asset issuance and the construction of on-chain applications.
Ethereum transformed the application scenarios of blockchain technology from points to surfaces, even into three dimensions.
Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum represents a new paradigm and a new species.
Ethereum is a revolution at the infrastructure level compared to Bitcoin.
Thus, we refer to the birth of Ethereum as the second revolution in Crypto.
All smart contract public chains that followed Ethereum are either imitations or improvements of Ethereum, without bringing about any essential changes.
From the birth of Bitcoin's genesis block (January 3, 2009) to the launch of Ethereum's mainnet (July 30, 2015), it took a full six years for Crypto to complete two revolutions.
The third revolution in Crypto occurred five years later, in 2020.
In the summer of 2020, DeFi exploded.
After years of application exploration, the Crypto industry finally discovered a unique new species that could only grow on blockchain networks—DeFi.
Decentralized banks (AAVE), decentralized exchanges (Uniswap), decentralized foreign exchange markets (Curve), decentralized funds (Yearn), etc.
DeFi is a revolution against traditional finance and a culmination of the characteristics of blockchain technology.
DeFi operates on the blockchain, making its data completely transparent and public (with lower audit costs than traditional finance), real-time on-chain settlement (with higher settlement efficiency than traditional finance), and relies entirely on smart contracts (with lower operating costs and higher trustworthiness than traditional finance). Moreover, DeFi operates 24/7 without borders on the blockchain (once again surpassing traditional finance in terms of time and space).
Therefore, DeFi can be considered the third revolution in Crypto, a revolution at the application layer of Crypto.
From 2020 to 2025, the Crypto industry has remained in the third revolution, during which no new species has emerged that surpasses DeFi. The decentralized principal and interest separation protocol (Pendle) and decentralized contract exchange (Hyperliquid) that appeared in the past two years are merely continuations of the DeFi paradigm. The Pumpfun model is just a combinatorial innovation of Bonding Curve + DEX, an extension of DeFi.
When the industry lacks disruptive innovation and no new revolution erupts, it can only rehash old ideas and repeat the wheel, leading to stagnation and silence in innovation, which is a fact that everyone can feel in this current crypto cycle.
So, when will the fourth revolution in the Crypto industry occur?
In what form will the fourth Crypto revolution appear?
The first Crypto revolution brought Crypto into existence; the second revolution improved Crypto's infrastructure; the third revolution established that the main application paradigm of Crypto is DeFi, with on-chain finance (DeFi) becoming the best bridge for Crypto to extend into the human world.
It can be said that after three revolutions, Crypto has gradually matured and improved. Crypto is no longer lacking in infrastructure or exploration of application directions. For Crypto to further prosper, it needs to build a more prosperous economic network on the existing on-chain financial infrastructure.
To put it bluntly, for Crypto to further prosper, it needs more on-chain users and more frequent on-chain economic activities, requiring a massive explosion of on-chain population to drive the sustained prosperity of the on-chain economy.
So, how can we achieve a massive explosion of on-chain population? How can we encourage more people to use Crypto?
Currently, the total number of blockchain users worldwide is about 560 million, while the global population with bank accounts is approximately 4.86 billion. Even if everyone with a bank account used blockchain for financial activities, the growth potential would be less than tenfold (and this is just an extreme value; the actual growth potential may be less than 2-3 times).
Therefore, hoping for a slow-growing human user base to promote the prosperity of the on-chain economy is clearly not a wise move.
Thus, let us focus on another group that is experiencing exponential and explosive growth—AI.
Today, AI is developing rapidly, and in the future, the number of AIs will surpass that of humans (as stated by Elon Musk and others).
For AI to evolve into AGI (Artificial General Intelligence with autonomous capabilities), it must have a trustworthy identity and account system. Currently, no organization in the world can issue a globally recognized and trustworthy ID and bank account for AI, but Crypto can naturally fulfill this role.
Therefore, Crypto will take on the historical mission of building identity and asset accounts for AI, and AI will become the largest user group of Crypto, which we refer to as on-chain AI.
The extensive economic exchanges, business interactions, and social collaborations among on-chain AIs will form an on-chain AI economy, thereby achieving true prosperity in the on-chain economy.
On-chain AIs are inherently more suited to blockchain than on-chain humans. AIs can work 24/7, and so can blockchains; AI's business interactions have no regional or national boundaries, and neither do blockchains; AI's collaboration efficiency requirements are extremely high, and blockchain perfectly matches this (all payments, transactions, and task processing on-chain are completed in real-time with high efficiency).
Thus, on-chain AI will be the fourth revolution that promotes the renewed prosperity of Crypto, which we call the massive explosion of on-chain population or the revolution of on-chain population growth.
However, achieving autonomous governance for on-chain AI and realizing the prosperity of the on-chain economy is not an overnight task. The most critical and first step is to achieve trustworthy verification of on-chain AI, meaning how to verify that the identity of on-chain AI is trustworthy and that the inputs and outputs of on-chain AI are reliable and verifiable.
The trustworthy verification of on-chain AI is the primary requirement for achieving great prosperity in the on-chain AI economy.
All human economic activities are the same; everything needs to be built on a trustworthy foundation. A person's identity, asset information, and business behavior all need to be trustworthy; otherwise, human commercial civilization and economic prosperity are mere talk. The saying that integrity is the foundation of all business reflects this idea.
Similarly, the prosperity of the on-chain AI economy also needs to be built on the foundation of trustworthy verification.
Therefore, whoever can solve the problem of trustworthy verification for on-chain AI will be able to initiate the prosperity of the on-chain AI economy and unlock the fourth Crypto revolution.
It is worth noting that many excellent entrepreneurs have begun to explore the issue of trustworthy verification for on-chain AI, and there are currently two mainstream directions:
One direction is to build a proprietary AI Layer1, allowing all on-chain AI standards and applications to be constructed based on the same infrastructure.
The typical representatives of AI Layer1 are @0G_labs and @bittensor.
0G mainly constructs an AI DA layer, ensuring the trustworthiness of AI data sources by verifying data integrity and enabling rapid retrieval through multi-consensus. As a proprietary AI Layer1, 0G focuses on AI data storage and access (such as AI model training datasets), verifying data rather than AI outputs/agents, and does not directly handle AI agent behavior.
Bittensor emphasizes building large AI models through decentralized incentives, optimizing machine learning through subnet incentives. Its advantage is standardization, while its disadvantage is incompatibility with externally constructed large AI models. Bittensor's logic is to construct AI models using blockchain, with the advantage of vertical specialization, enabling trustworthy verification of AI within the ecosystem, while its disadvantage is incompatibility with external AI models.
Another direction is to directly build a trustworthy verification network for AI, which directly verifies the input and output processes of AI and is compatible with all external AI models.
The typical representatives here are @MiraNetwork and @DeepSafeAI.
Mira forms consensus through cross-validation of multiple models to achieve factual consistency, then involves community nodes in the final arbitration, and records proof on-chain to ultimately achieve trustworthy verification of AI. Mira's method for achieving trustworthy verification of AI is a social consensus method based on cross-validation and community arbitration, emphasizing the verification of AI outputs.
DeepSafe, on the other hand, constructs a CRVA (Crypto Random Verification Agent) through four cryptographic technologies: Ring-VRF random algorithm, ZKP, MPC privacy computing, and TEE hardware isolation, to dynamically and randomly select nodes (rotating every 10-60 minutes) for multi-agent collaborative verification of AI intentions and behaviors, supporting both on-chain and off-chain AI message verification. This AI trustworthy verification solution, which relies entirely on cryptography and mathematics, is referred to as the mathematical consensus method, with DeepSafe emphasizing the verification of the input and output processes of AI.
The above outlines the two mainstream directions and representative projects in the AI trustworthy verification market.
In summary, the AI Layer1 faction represented by @0Glabs and @bittensor achieves trustworthy verification of AI data through a unified standard AI infrastructure; while the AI trustworthy verification network represented by @MiraNetwork and @DeepSafe_AI directly addresses the verification of AI inputs and outputs, achieving trustworthy verification of AI through social consensus methods or mathematical consensus methods.
It is currently difficult to say which of these two factions will become the mainstream AI trustworthy verification solution in the future, but it is evident that the AI trustworthy verification market—ATVM (AI Trusted Verification Market) is gradually opening up, with more and more excellent entrepreneurs entering this field.
I believe that as the AI trustworthy verification market grows, an increasing number of trustworthy AIs will operate on the blockchain. Currently, there may only be hundreds of thousands or millions, but in the future, there will be several times the number of on-chain AIs compared to on-chain humans. They will become the mainstream users on the blockchain, and a large volume of on-chain business transactions and commercial activities will occur between on-chain AIs and between on-chain AIs and on-chain humans, thereby fostering true prosperity in the on-chain economy.
Perhaps, in the next 3-5 years, people will witness the great prosperity of the on-chain AI economic network, and they will refer to this exploration of trustworthy verification for on-chain AI as the fourth Crypto revolution.
The concepts of on-chain AI, AI trustworthy identity and account systems, and the idea that blockchain serves as the identity and account system for AI, with AI being the largest user group of blockchain, have been elaborated in detail in my earlier article with over 250,000 views—"The Final Thoughts on Crypto + Agent." For those interested in learning more, you can click to read https://x.com/Cyrus_G3/status/1875439092902850569.
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