From Parallel to Convergent: Exploring the New Wave of Digital Economy Led by Web3 and AI Integration
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From Parallel to Convergent: Exploring the New Wave of Digital Economy Led by Web3 and AI Integration
The integration of Web3 and AI is becoming an inevitable trend.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthors: Cynic, Shigeru
This article serves as the introductory piece of the Web3 x AI research series.
Introduction
In today's era of rapid technological advancement, the convergence of Web3 and artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an inevitable trend. These two fields are no longer parallel tracks evolving independently—they are increasingly intertwining to jointly shape our digital future.
Web3, as a decentralized and distributed network paradigm, offers a fairer and more transparent digital space. Its core principle is user empowerment—through blockchain and cryptographic technologies, users gain control over their own data. Meanwhile, AI stands as one of the primary driving forces propelling this era forward. By learning from and simulating human intelligence, AI enhances decision-making speed and quality, optimizes user experiences, and plays a transformative role in data processing and analytics.
When combined, these technologies herald a new kind of internet experience. In this AI-driven, Web3-supported world, we can expect not only more personalized and intelligent services but also unprecedented levels of data security and transparency. AI can leverage its analytical and predictive capabilities within the Web3 framework, while Web3 provides AI with a decentralized, tamper-resistant data platform.
This fusion signals a smarter, more decentralized digital future—one where technology not only serves humanity but deeply aligns with our lifestyles, values, and goals. The integration of Web3 and AI transcends mere technical synergy; it represents a vision and active shaping of future societal structures and cultures.
The CGV Research team will launch a series of reports on the theme of "Web3 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Convergence," exploring how AI integrates with Web3 applications such as DeFi, NFTs, computing power, and data management. We aim to push the innovation boundaries of Web3 and AI technologies and uncover more practical and cutting-edge Web3×AI solutions.
Web3: The Next-Generation Internet for Personal Sovereignty
Web3 is the next-generation internet built on decentralization and blockchain technology, aiming to establish a new value system where users hold digital sovereignty. Its goal is to break the data monopolies held by internet giants and empower individuals to own and control the content and digital assets they create.
The original ethos of the internet is openness, freedom, and sharing. If Web2’s centralized tech giants, leveraging centralized servers to harvest user data, have strayed from this spirit, then the open, transparent, and decentralized nature of Web3—returning data control and ownership to individual users—represents a renaissance for the digital age.
Early Web3 primarily focused on financial use cases, with cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance (DeFi) as the main applications. Today, Web3 has expanded significantly into gaming, social platforms, and governance, emerging as new growth frontiers, with many traditional industries migrating toward Web3.
AI: A New Industrial Revolution Driven by Data and Computing Power
AI enables computer systems to simulate human intelligence, granting machines cognitive abilities centered on reasoning, learning, and self-correction.
Early AI used domain-specific datasets to train specialized models for particular tasks, mainly applied in areas like computer vision (CV) and natural language processing (NLP)—a phase often referred to as AI 1.0. The emergence of large language models (LLMs), exemplified by ChatGPT, marks the transition into the AI 2.0 era. AI 2.0 leverages massive cross-domain datasets and immense computational power to train general-purpose models with strong generalization capabilities that can perform diverse tasks. These large models require only fine-tuning for specific applications, resulting in low marginal costs and greater suitability for large-scale commercialization.
General-purpose AI in the AI 2.0 era excels across seven dimensions: text generation, language understanding, knowledge问答, logical reasoning, mathematics, coding, and multimodality. Productivity expands dramatically, positioning AI as a new engine of growth for human society since the internet revolution.
Web3 x AI: An Inevitable Trend in Digital Economy Development
From a macro perspective, Web3 and AI may embody seemingly opposing cores: Web3 emphasizes decentralization, whereas AI, due to its heavy reliance on vast computing power for model training, tends to be centralized. Yet the two are not contradictory but rather complementary. Web3 represents the most advanced production *relations*, ensuring individuals truly own their data, content, and assets—restoring sovereignty to the individual. AI represents the most advanced *productivity*, liberating humanity from tedious, repetitive tasks. Their convergence is thus an inevitable trajectory in the evolution of the digital economy.
On one hand, Web3 brings a decentralized mode of production to AI. By leveraging blockchain’s characteristics—openness, transparency, and verifiability—it addresses user incentive challenges. Generative AI drastically lowers the barrier to creating high-quality content, while Web3 ensures creators can capture the value generated by their contributions. With blockchain, every user contribution can be recorded publicly, transparently, and immutably, enabling fair compensation and fueling individual creativity.
On the other hand, AI makes Web3 intelligent—boosting efficiency, expanding application scenarios, and enhancing user experience. Generative AI accelerates creative processes, improves content quality and diversity, empowers individuals with stronger productivity tools, broadens the frontier of innovation, and enables Web3 innovations to emerge at lower cost. “One person becomes a team.” With AI, Web3 products can deliver smarter services, lower entry barriers, and drive mass adoption.
Revitalizing Industries: Real-World Applications of Web3 x AI
After years of research and development, both Web3 and AI are now ready for large-scale deployment. The singularity of the digital economy is approaching—multiple sectors will undergo transformation through Web3 x AI, sparking renewed vitality.
At the physical layer, Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining hardware can be integrated with AI model training to fully unleash computing power. As large models led by ChatGPT rise, computing power has become a critical bottleneck for AI development—yet access to vast computational resources remains limited to a few major players, hindering broader innovation. In response, a new paradigm called DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) has emerged. By integrating cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, DePIN efficiently aggregates globally dispersed computing resources and data, establishing an open, shared computing infrastructure. This network provides AI models with a continuous, reliable resource ecosystem, making model training and deployment more feasible and sustainable.
At the data layer, Web3 incentivizes users to generate higher-quality data, further improving AI model performance. At its foundation, AI relies on three components: algorithms, computing power, and data—with data being the most crucial determinant of model quality. Most current AI models are trained on public data, which is low-cost but often inconsistent in quality. High-quality data is essential for efficient AI models. In traditional markets, users cannot benefit from the data they generate, but Web3 restores data sovereignty, allowing users to profit from their contributions and providing positive incentives to produce better content.
At the application layer, AI enhances existing Web3 applications with greater intelligence and improved user experience. Security remains the Achilles’ heel of DeFi; AI-powered smart contract auditing can significantly reduce vulnerabilities. In the NFT and gaming sectors, AI-generated content (AIGC) reduces the difficulty of asset creation and accelerates innovation. For DAO governance, AI can serve not only as an advisory tool but also as an active participant, introducing new dimensions to decision-making processes.
Envisioning the Fusion of Web3 and AI: Ushering in a New Era of the Digital Economy
2023 was a year of miracles: Web3 achieved mass adoption, with standout projects in social and gaming going mainstream; AI officially entered its 2.0 era, as large language models empowered countless industries and approached an innovation inflection point.
CGV Research believes the convergence of AI and Web3 not only opens new technological frontiers but also signals profound transformations across social, economic, and cultural domains. This fusion empowers individuals with greater digital sovereignty and creative capacity, while delivering more efficient and intelligent productivity and services to society at large. As technology continues to advance, we are moving toward a more decentralized and intelligent digital future—one where individual value and contributions are fully recognized and rewarded.
CGV firmly believes that Web3 x AI is the inevitable path of the digital economy and will give rise to an increasing number of unicorn projects. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with builders, CGV has launched the AIFocus Accelerator to provide comprehensive support for innovators in the Web3 x AI space, co-building the future of Web3 x AI. At this pivotal moment where Web3 and AI converge, the AIFocus Accelerator warmly invites innovators and developers worldwide to join this historic journey.
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