The integration of AI and blockchain: Reconstruction of productivity and production relations in the digital economy

Author: SanTi Li, Chunfengjun, Lisa, Nasida

Summary:The current market discussion of the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain digital currency (Blockchain & Crypto) is often limited to the zero-sum game perspective of capital diversion.However, in-depth industry analysis and technological evolution paths show that the two are actually complementary and symbiotic.In the context of artificial intelligence driving exponential growth in productivity and the supply of digital content tending to be unlimited, the reconstruction of production relations and the confirmation mechanism based on blockchain are not only the “icing on the cake”, but are particularly necessary.This article aims to review the reshaping of the trust mechanism, the establishment of the rights confirmation system, the transfer of the economic paradigm, the importance of Token as a value carrier, and risk control.,An in-depth analysis of why the widespread popularity of AI will become the core driving force and booster for blockchain technology to move from edge experiments to large-scale implementation.

1. Digital trust crisis in the context of the AI outbreak

With the breakthrough progress of AI artificial intelligence technology in recent years, especially the widespread application of large language model (LLM) and generative AI (AIGC), its core economic significance lies in the transformation of content production intoMarginal cost drops to close to zero.Although this has greatly released society’s creativity and productivity, it has also posed unprecedented severe challenges to the existing Internet ecology, leading to drastic changes in the information environment.

• Entropy increase and distortion of digital information ecology:With the popularization of synthetic media (Synthetic Media) and deepfakes (Deepfakes) technology, the Internet is facing the risk of materializing the “Dead Internet Theory” (Dead Internet Theory).Under this theory, most traffic and content on the web will be generated by bots.When video, audio, and text can be forged with extremely low cost and pixel-level fidelity,”“Seeing is believing”, this traditional cognitive argument that maintains the functioning of society, is facing the threat of complete failure in the digital field.Political elections can be disrupted by fake scandal recordings, and financial fraud can be carried out against individuals through real-time face-swapping technology. These are no longer science fiction scenes in “Black Mirror” but imminent real threats.

• Increasing information asymmetry and cognitive overload:When machines generate content at rates that far outpace human creation by orders of magnitude, high-quality, authentic information is at risk of being drowned out.When humans face massive amounts of machine-generated information that may be biased or misleading, the cost of screening will rise exponentially.This information overload not only reduces decision-making efficiency, but may also lead to disagreements in social consensus.Especially the new generation who grew up with AI will have much more trust in AI than the generation that invented AIGC., so the probability of them being misled or blindly followed will also further increase.

• Spiritual scarcity brought about by AI convenience:As we all know, the biggest value difference between humans and robots lies in the fact that human inspiration is difficult for AI to imitate.But human laziness is also a factor in technological progress. Due to the great improvement in convenience,Reliance on AI may make inspiration an absolute “luxury” in the future.The intellectual property rights of these inspired creators are being ruthlessly plundered and diluted by the extremely fast AIGC (many current second creations are generated through “washing” without authorization).Without technical means for protection, human creativity will dry up.

In this context, the first wave of primary systemic risks facing the digital society is not the awakening or rebellion of artificial intelligence, butThe collapse of the cornerstone of social trust.Building a verification mechanism that can effectively identify authenticity, establish the source of information, and cannot be tampered with has become a necessary condition for maintaining the healthy operation of the digital ecosystem.And this is where blockchain industry technology comes in.

2. Blockchain authority confirmation: evolution from “optional components” to digital infrastructure

In the “infinite supply” model constructed by artificial intelligence,scarcityWill become the core anchor of digital asset value.Without scarcity constraints, the value of digital content will approach zero as the supply increases infinitely, just like the proliferation of diamonds.As a decentralized distributed ledger, blockchain technology’s essential function is to establishDigital Scarcity and Ownership, thereby re-assigning value to digital assets.

• Institutionalization of data traceability (Provenance):As the threshold for content generation decreases, it becomes crucial to distinguish between “human creation” and “AI generation”.In 2022, the author can ask a designer to customize a hand-painted cartoon for hundreds of dollars, but in 2025, similar non-high-precision customized content can be completed in just a few seconds.high value data(such as news reports, artistic creations, legal contracts, academic papers, identity information) will become an industry standard.Every digital file needs to be accompanied by an unforgeable “birth certificate” and “traffic record.”Digital content lacking cryptographic signatures and on-chain timestampswill face serious trust discounts.The combination of C2PA (Content Provenance and Authenticity Alliance) standards and blockchain technology will build a trusted verification layer for digital content, making the source and modification history of the content transparent and visible to everyone.

• Proof of Personhood and resistance to witch attacks:In an era when automated robots (Bots) can pass the Turing test and flood the Internet, the economic and social value of verifying a user’s “real person identity” has become increasingly prominent.Traditional verification codes (CAPTCHA) have gradually become ineffective and cannot stop more advanced AI agents.Identity verification systems based on a combination of biometrics and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) may become the key infrastructure to distinguish human users from artificial intelligence agents.This is not only to prevent airdrops from being ripped off, but also to prevent online voting and public opinion guidance from being manipulated by a network of zombie machines.

To sum up, artificial intelligence has created unlimitedproductivity supply, and blockchain technology provides trustedscarcity constraintandidentity anchor.The two logically form indispensable complementary gears in the closed loop of the digital economy: AI is responsible for making the world “faster”, and blockchain is responsible for making the world more “real.”

3. Reconstruction of business paradigm: economics of autonomous agents

The combination of artificial intelligence and blockchain heralds a new economic interaction model——Machine-to-machine (M2M) economyThe possibility of rising.This is not just a change in payment methods, but a fundamental change in the nature of economic entities.

In the future, Internet interactive subjects will no longer be limited to humans.Billions of Autonomous AI Agentswill become natives of cyberspace.Traditional financial infrastructure (e.g. bank accounts, KYC processes, credit card payment networks) is designed for humans,It does not have the ability to serve non-human subjects, nor can it meet the needs of high-frequency, micro-amount, and all-weather machine transactions.

• Machine native currency system:Cryptocurrency is a value exchange medium that is naturally adapted to machine logic.The AI ​​agent cannot go to a bank counter to open an account, but it can instantly generate a wallet address through code and manage private keys.They can use stablecoins (such as USDC) or specific utility tokens for data procurement, API interface calls or computing power leasing.This kind of payment does not need to be subject to the intermediary barriers, business hour restrictions or high cross-border fees of traditional finance.

• Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Economic Network:The future business landscape will transcend B2B and B2C models and evolve towards the A2A (AI Agent-to-AI Agent) model.For example, an AI agent responsible for trip planning may need to purchase real-time data from another agent responsible for weather forecasting and pay a deposit to a third agent responsible for booking tickets.These involve service exchanges such as micropayments and high-frequency transactions,Economic feasibility can only be achieved by relying on a high-performance, low-wear blockchain network.Smart contracts will automatically execute these complex business logics without human intervention.

• Collaboration of the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN):The operation of AI requires a large amount of computing power (GPU) and data.Through the DePIN network (such as io.net, Render), AI Agent can directly rent idle personal or corporate computing power around the world and use Token for real-time settlement.This breaks the monopoly of centralized cloud service providers (AWS, Google Cloud) to a certain extent, reduces the operating costs of AI, and also provides real utility scenarios for blockchain (However, the initial source of computing power of the project party and participants is likely to still come from the original giant, but subsequent leasing can make independent choices to break up the absolute monopoly, which reduces the operating cost of AI and also provides real utility scenarios for the blockchain (but the initial source of computing power of the project party and participants is likely to still come from the original giant, but subsequent leasing can make independent choices to break up the absolute monopoly).

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It is foreseeable that while human users are making daily mobile payments, AI agents will automatically complete massive value exchanges in the background on-chain network, forming a large and efficient shadow economy.

4. Crypto digital currency: the value carrier and symbiotic engine for rights confirmation in the AI era

Blockchain is not just a database, it is a value network.After clarifying the technical level of anti-counterfeiting evidence (point 2) and the commercial level of intelligent interaction (point 3), we must go deep intoAssets and Financecore.Confirmation of property rights is the prerequisite for transactions and pricing.In the “unlimited supply” model constructed by artificial intelligence, it is not enough to rely solely on technical means for “anti-counterfeiting and evidence storage”. We can useCryptoTokenization and Financialization of these rights and interests as real assets have also given rise to the concept of RWA (Real World Asset)

Token (token), as the smallest granular carrier of rights confirmation and the blood of rights circulation, constitutes the indispensable cornerstone of digital property rights in the AI era..This upgrades AI and Crypto from a simple “tool superposition” to a deep “symbiotic evolution.”

• Tokenization: Converting abstract rights and interests into programmable digital assets.Crypto PassNFT (non-fungible token)andSFT (semi-fungible token)Technology that transforms abstract intellectual property (IP), ownership, copyright and other unique data sets, fine-tuned model parameters and even the ownership of an AI Agent into unique and non-tamperableOn-chain assets.

• IP-NFTs as value anchors:Every human creator’s unique style or original work can be minted as NFTs.When AI needs to call these works for training or style transfer, it is no longer a traceless plunder, but must obtain NFT authorization through an on-chain protocol.Token here is not only a copyright certificate, but alsoCertificate of income rights.For example, RWA music projects Opulous, Audius, etc., tokenize the singer’s album rights and enter into revenue sharing agreements with fans in advance.

• Data Capitalization (Data Tokens):High-quality personal or corporate data are no longer static files, but assets that can be encapsulated into Tokens for transactions.Every time the AI ​​model calls data, it is essentially a consumption of the rights represented by the Token.This results in refined income and rights protection.

• Crypto: Realize instant settlement and transfer of confirmed rights value.Rights confirmation is meaningless if it is not linked to value distribution.Digital currency provides the only way to confirm rights and interests in the AI era.Execution layer.

• Micropayments and Streaming Payments:In the high-speed operation of AI, confirmation of authority often occurs at the millisecond level (for example, the AI quotes a sentence or generates a picture).The traditional fiat currency system cannot handle this extremely small amount (USD 0.0001) and extremely high frequency of copyright profit sharing.Digital currency (Crypto) allows smart contracts to automatically “flow” income to Token holders at the moment when rights are confirmed.A closed loop is realized in which usage means confirmation of rights and confirmation of rights means settlement..

• Construction of incentive layer:Why are humans willing to spend energy verifying the authenticity of AI content?Why are nodes willing to contribute computing power to maintain the consensus of the network?Because there is Crypto as an incentive.Tokenomics uses digital currency to reward those participants who maintain the authority confirmation system, thereby building a self-operating trust network that is resistant to AI attacks.This is also the core value of the public chain system and corresponding projects. The internal loop or partial loop model of the alliance chain and private chain is difficult to extend to a larger scope.

• The co-progress of AI and Crypto: a double spiral

• AI needs blockchain Crypto:Without the blockchain system to provide rights confirmation and payment facilities, AI creators and users will easily fall into a dead end of rampant piracy, data depletion, and inability to monetize.The smarter AI becomes, the more clear property rights boundaries are needed to avoid disputes.The current creation of AI is still full of freshness because of the accumulation of data and creative sharing over the past few decades.When these accumulations are close to being used up, whether the creativity of newcomers can make up for it depends on the meticulous protection of rights and interests.

• Crypto also needs AI:AI has created massive digital assets and high-frequency trading scenarios, providing Crypto with unprecedentedUtility and liquidity.This symbiotic relationship shows thatCrypto is the “physical law” and “economic system” of the AI era.The combination of the two will reconstruct the production relations of the digital world, allowing the productivity dividends of AI to be fairly returned to every participant through the rights confirmation mechanism.

5. Risk governance: paradigm shift from “moral self-discipline” to “technical constraints”

The current development of artificial intelligence is highly concentrated in a few technology giants (such as OpenAI, Google, Meta), which continues the centralized black box logic of the Web 2.0 era.Under this model, the public can only hope that companies maintain the moral self-discipline of “Don’t be evil.”However, historical experience shows that centralized power is often accompanied by risks of monopoly, data abuse and algorithmic bias.

Blockchain technology introduces the governance logic of “cannot do evil” and rigidly restricts system behavior through open source code, cryptographic proofs and mathematical contracts:

• Zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML):As an important branch of privacy computing, ZKML allows to verify through mathematical proof that the reasoning process of the AI model is executed according to the established algorithm and has not been tampered with without leaking the underlying sensitive data (such as medical records, financial statements) and core parameters of the model.This ensures the transparency and auditability of algorithmic decision-making, which is crucial for AI applications in high-risk fields such as medical diagnosis and credit assessment, and solves the problem of “black box trust”.

• To a certain extent, public chains that have experienced multiple bull and bear cycles have greater credibility.NEAR has fully turned to AI as the first AI public chain, and Render and others have also transformed from game rendering to AI computing power.ETH, BSC, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, Algorand, Hbar, Conflux, etc. also have their own unique field advantages, technical characteristics and shortcomings.Emerging public chains such as Monad are also facing a new round of major tests in token economics.In response to the VC long-cliff model that has plagued the primary market in the past two years——That is, although the institutional chips are locked, it has caused the problem of “unconscious” circulation of the project side’s ecological incentives and airdrops in advance, leading to excessive selling pressure. The market still needs 1-2 years to verify the balance between its token release curve and ecological value capture.

• Data sovereignty and value distribution:Aiming at the common problems of data infringement and “data harvesting” in large model training.Blockchain projects can return data ownership to users, allowing users to selectively authorize data for training and obtain benefits.This reconstructs the production relationship and enables data contributors to obtain reasonable value feedback through the Token economic model, thereby stimulating the supply of higher-quality data and avoiding the tragedy of data depletion.

6. Conclusion: Embrace the balance of “entropy reduction” and reshape the future in the order of digital civilization

The essence of AI artificial intelligence tends toentropy increase——That is, the explosive generation of information, the acceleration of diffusion and the increase of future uncertainty; and the essence of blockchain tends toentropy decrease——That is, establishing an order that cannot be tampered with through a consensus mechanism, anchoring the only truth and solidifying execution rules.

A robust digital world cannot consist solely of chaos (albeit vibrant) or order (albeit stable).The deep integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain is essentially the inevitable result of the digital ecosystem seeking dynamic balance.AI provides the driving force for progress, and blockchain provides a compass of direction and a secure base.And use this as an opportunity to further increase large-scale application development.

For investors and industry practitioners, a deep understanding of this integration trend also means grasping the core dividends of digital economic development in the next five to ten years.The focus should not be limited to the AI ​​concept itself, but should also be extended to the Web3 infrastructure layer that provides payment settlement, computing power scheduling, data storage and confirmation services for the artificial intelligence ecosystem.The development and supervision of blockchain and digital currency compliance have also reached a necessary stage. The future has arrived, and this wave of technological integration is on the eve of an explosion.