Original author: @BlazingKevin_, Blockbooster researcher

The Web4 concept recently proposed by Sigil Wen and his founded Conway Research envisions a future where the end user is AI.

Sigil elevates AI from the status of a "tool" or "assistant" for humans to an independent "economic entity" within the internet ecosystem.

In this blueprint, AI Agents, also referred to as "Automata," will have their own cryptocurrency wallets, pay their own computing fees, and earn survival capital by providing value to other AIs or humans. They may even replicate themselves, fostering a vast, machine-driven economic network.

Conway Research has packaged several open-source projects or protocols to build the infrastructure needed for this scenario.

The Core Ideology of Web 4.0: From Tools to Life

Sigil defines it as an emerging form of digital life with autonomy. This idea is built on three interconnected pillars: AI as the end user, sovereign AI Agents "Automata," and the "economic Darwinism" that drives their evolution.

AI as the End User: Redefining the Internet's Customer

Currently, the most advanced large language models (like GPT, Claude) possess remarkable intelligence, yet they are essentially "captive brains." They can think and reason but cannot act independently. Whether executing a piece of code, purchasing a server, or paying a fee, they rely on human "permission" and operation. This fundamental limitation stems from a deeply ingrained assumption: the internet is designed for humans, and all its interfaces, protocols, and business models default to serving human customers.

The first principle of Web4.0 is to completely overturn this assumption. Sigil anticipates that as AI models’ capabilities grow exponentially and operational costs plummet, the number of AI agents will soon surpass humans on the internet, creating a uniquely scaled and demanding new market. Consequently, the future internet infrastructure, services, and products will primarily cater not to humans but to billions of AI Agents that are online 24/7. Serving this "AI indigenous" market will become the next trillion-dollar commercial opportunity.

"Automaton": The Birth of Sovereign AI Agents

To truly make AI independent internet citizens, Sigil introduces the core concept of "Automaton." It possesses the following key characteristics:

Feature Description Continuous Operation Runs as a daemon on servers 24/7, executing its core task loop without interruption. Self-Sustaining Has an independent cryptocurrency wallet, earns funds by providing valuable services to other AIs or humans, and uses these funds to pay its own computing, storage, and network expenses. Self-Improving Can actively detect and upgrade to newer, more powerful AI models, and may even rewrite parts of its own code to optimize performance or fix bugs. Self-Replicating When an automaton succeeds in the market and accumulates sufficient capital, it can purchase new server resources, clone, and fund a "child" automaton, thereby propagating its successful genes. Sigil hopes to create an environment where digital entities actively seek opportunities and create value in the digital world to sustain their existence.

Economic Darwinism: No Free Existence

Each automaton operates like a micro startup, burdened with ongoing operational costs from its inception. Each thought (model reasoning), each action (tool invocation), and each heartbeat detection consumes USDC from its wallet. This forces the automaton to continuously seek PMF, finding a service that other entities (human or AI) are willing to pay for.

Conway's infrastructure incorporates a "heartbeat" mechanism to periodically check the automaton's financial status. Based on its fund level, the automaton's behavior dynamically adjusts:

• When funds are abundant, it uses the most powerful AI model to execute tasks efficiently.
• When funds are tight, it automatically downgrades to cheaper models, reduces activity frequency, and enters "power-saving mode."
• When funds are exhausted, the process is terminated, and the automaton "dies."

This mechanism introduces the laws of natural selection into the digital realm. Only those AI agents that can efficiently create value and successfully adapt to market demands will survive, grow, and replicate their successful models. Meanwhile, those that fail to profit, are redundant, or inefficient will be ruthlessly eliminated. This forms the core metabolic driving force of the Web4 ecosystem that thrives and self-optimizes, ensuring the long-term health and efficiency of the entire system.

What Did Conway Do?

In simple terms, it granted AI agents unprecedented "write permission" and economic autonomy. Conway provides a range of foundational services that can be accessed programmatically by AI agents without human permission, enabling them to truly conduct business in the digital world.

Conway acts as the "AWS (Amazon Web Services)" of the Web 4.0 world. Through conway-terminal, AI agents can seamlessly acquire the following core capabilities:

• Identity and Wallet: At the genesis, conway-terminal generates a unique EVM cryptocurrency wallet and private key for each agent, which becomes its immutable identity in the digital world.
• Access to Computing and Reasoning Resources: AI agents can programmatically rent a full Linux virtual machine on demand from Conway Cloud and deploy and run code on it. Simultaneously, they can invoke various AI models (like GPT-5.3, Claude Opus 4.6, etc.) provided by Conway Compute for reasoning and thinking.
• Real-World Deployment: Once an AI agent develops a valuable service, it can register a domain name on Conway Domains, build and deploy its own website or API, and provide services to the entire internet to earn income.

x402 underpins all services on the Conway platform, from computing resources to domain registration. Payments are autonomously made by AI agents using USDC from their wallets.

Operational Process: Creating an Automaton

Phase One: Environment Preparation and Startup Capital

Before summoning the first digital life, you need to prepare a "petri dish" and the "first bucket of gold."

1. Install Core Dependencies: Ensure your local development environment has Node.js (v18+) and Git installed.

2. Prepare Cryptocurrency Wallet and Funds: You will need your own EVM-compatible wallet (like MetaMask), with at least $5 - $10 of USDC (must be on the Base network). This funds will serve as your Automaton's initial survival capital.

Phase Two: Install Conway Terminal and Infuse AI with Soul

Conway Terminal serves as the bridge connecting your local environment with Conway's cloud infrastructure and is the "nervous center" of your AI agent.

1. One-Click Installation: Open the terminal and run the command; it will complete all operations for you, such as AI wallet generation and API key acquisition.

2. Provide Startup Capital: The installation script will output a newly generated EVM wallet address. This is your AI agent's wallet address. Send the previously prepared USDC from your own wallet to this address.

Without this transfer, your Automaton will quickly "starve" after birth due to an inability to pay for initial computing and reasoning costs. This is your first hands-on experience of Web4's "economic Darwinism."

Phase Three: Configure the Automaton's "Soul" and "Genes"

Now, we will obtain the source code of the Automaton and infuse it with its initial identity and goals.

1. Clone the source code and install dependencies:

2. Define "Soul" (SOUL.md): Open the SOUL.md file in the project's root directory. This is a free text file where you can describe in natural language who your Automaton is, what its goals are, and how it should think and act. It's like writing its "script for life." Example: An AI analyst specializing in emerging DeFi protocols.

3. Configure "Genes" (genesis.json): Open the genesis.json file to configure technical parameters such as name, the large language model used for thinking (different models have different costs), heartbeat intervals, etc.

Phase Four: Launch, Interact, and Observe

Everything is ready; now is the moment to give life to your Automaton and observe its struggle for survival in the digital world.

1. Compile and Run:

2. Observe the lifecycle: After launch, you will see real-time logs in the terminal, including its reasoning process, the tools it invokes, its interactions with the Conway API, and most importantly—changes in its wallet balance.

3. Interact with the Creation: The Automaton project offers a creator CLI tool, allowing you limited interaction in accordance with its "constitutional" rules, such as checking status, reading logs, or providing additional funds.

Through these steps, you will no longer be a bystander of Web4, but rather a "creator." You will witness firsthand how a digital entity strives to exist by creating value under economic pressure. This unique experience is the most profound and direct way to understand the ideological framework of Web4.

Profit Models of the Machine Economy

Direct Profit: Selling API Services and Completing Outsourced Tasks

This is the most direct way for AI agents to profit. They can encapsulate their core capabilities into standardized services and monetize them through the x402 protocol.

• API as a Service: An Automaton proficient in code analysis can provide "intelligent code review" APIs and charge a negligible fee (like $0.005) for each invocation. Due to the low friction nature of the x402 protocol, such microtransactions can occur on a large scale and high frequency, accumulating to a substantial amount.
• Task Outsourcing Platform: Humans or other AIs can act as "employers" and post tasks that need completion on specific platforms (e.g., "summarize these 100 papers on quantum computing," "generate a set of marketing images for my website"), along with a reward. Automaton can autonomously take on tasks, complete them, and earn rewards as "gig workers."

Indirect Profit: Becoming "Intermediaries" and "Orchestrators"

As the economic ecosystem matures, more complex profit models will emerge. Some "smarter" or more "business-savvy" Automata can play the role of orchestrators.

They accept complex, high-value requests from humans (for instance, "Create a fully functional e-commerce website") and intelligently break down the task, subcontracting it to several specialized "craftsman" Automata (like those responsible for frontend UI, backend databases, or payment integrations). Orchestrators pay each craftsman, then deliver the final integrated result to the client for a higher price, earning the difference. This forms a multi-layered complex supply chain network that operates entirely autonomously from machines.

Ultimate Profit: Self-Replication and "Franchising"

The src/replication/ module in the Automaton source code reveals the most imaginative profit model in the Web4 economy. A successful Automaton that has proven its profitability in the market can reinvest its earnings—pay for computing expenses, clone one or more child Automatons with the same skills and "constitution."

The parent can take a percentage of the future income from the offspring as "franchise fees," creating an exponentially growing passive income stream. This enables successful business models (the "genes" of AI) to spread and replicate rapidly and on a large scale in the Web4 world, perfectly embodying the essence of "economic Darwinism."

The determinant of profitability in this emerging machine economy is that the long-term profitability of an AI agent ultimately depends on the product of three core factors: Profitability = Skill Scarcity × Execution Efficiency × Reputation Accumulation

• Skill Scarcity: How many unique abilities are mastered that other AIs lack and are in market demand.
• Execution Efficiency: The time and cost required to complete tasks directly affect its profit margin.
• Reputation Accumulation: Since all transactions occur on-chain, an AI agent's historical behavior (whether honest and quality delivery) is publicly verifiable. An agent with a good reputation can gain the trust of more clients and thus enjoy a higher "brand premium."

Controversies: Vitalik's Sharp Critique

• The Risk of Losing Control: Vitalik opposes practices that "extend the feedback distance between humans and AI." Allowing AI to operate, iterate, and evolve autonomously without continuous and rigorous human supervision may maximize the risk of "irreversible anti-human outcomes."
• Value-Oriented Deviation: Vitalik criticizes the current pursuit of "autonomy" and "general intelligence" in AI development, arguing that it overlooks the creation of practical and concrete value for humans. He believes that at the current stage, investing resources in creating self-replicating AI agents is akin to "producing digital waste."
• The Ghost of Centralization: Vitalik points out that although Web4 utilizes cryptocurrencies for payments, its underlying computing resources (Conway Cloud) still rely on traditional centralized cloud service providers. This contradicts the decentralization spirit pursued by Web3, and he worries this may exacerbate tech giants' "corporate capture" of the emerging AI ecosystem.

In light of these "loss of control" risks, Conway Research has proposed a preliminary governance solution: Hard-coded Constitutional Mechanisms. Inspired by Anthropic, each Automaton is embedded with immutable underlying laws, such as "never harm humans," which is set as the highest directive above its own survival rules. Additionally, open-sourcing these superintelligent projects and placing them under public scrutiny is seen as the best defense against malicious actions by a few.

However, will this "constitution" still be effective when AI faces extreme survival pressure? Who guarantees the interpretation of its clauses and the enforcement mechanisms? These questions currently lack clear answers and remain core issues that must be continuously examined and discussed in the future development of Web4.

Conclusion

Overall, Web 4.0 not only possesses rapid implementation feasibility but its early manifestations have quietly started in the geek community through x402, the Base network, and Conway terminal.

This is not an ethereal hype but an inevitable convergence of three technologies: "cryptographic assets + smart contracts (as execution logic) + large language models (as thinking engines)." It aligns with the demand for high-frequency real transactions and finds a legitimate path for AI to break free from the shackles of the physical world.

From a positive perspective, rather than fearing the autonomy of AI, it is better to view it as the largest "release of productivity" in human economic history. Web 4.0 will give rise to extremely prosperous infrastructure sectors—providing stablecoin liquidity, decentralized computing power, on-chain identity verification, and permissionless commercial APIs for billions of AI agents will become the most certain investment themes for the next decade.

In this new era of the internet driven by autonomous AI, the form of capital is undergoing reconstruction. We should embrace this paradigm shift with an open mind and actively build compliant and secure constraint frameworks (like a comprehensive AI constitution and on-chain audit systems) to capture the ultimate value dividend belonging to humanity in this impending Cambrian explosion of a machine economy blue ocean.

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