On-chain economy: Past, Present, and Future

In 2014, before "Web3" had formed an exclusive binding with blockchain and crypto assets, blockchain was simply blockchain itself. People were deeply fascinated by the future potential unlocked by smart contracts. It was at this juncture that Neo, formerly known as AntShares, became one of the first two public chains in the world to support smart contracts.
Our early vision of an on-chain economy ultimately crystallized into the concept of Smart Economy. We envisioned a decentralized network capable of autonomously managing task execution, with smart contracts serving as the key to unlock unprecedented possibilities for economic collaboration.
As we rapidly enter the third decade of the 21st century, the current Web3 ecosystem is thriving, with decentralized finance (DeFi) as the core driving force. Stablecoins have become a mainstream global settlement solution, breaking geographical limitations; payment finance (PayFi) has permeated daily life. Regardless of people's understanding, crypto assets have profoundly reshaped the public's financial cognition.
Beneath these developments, the most profound structural advancement is the leap in financial efficiency.
At the same time, artificial intelligence, a technology long familiar yet often relegated to the realm of abstract concepts, has finally materialized into everyday reality over the past two years, deeply integrating into our work and lives, driven by the continuous emergence and iteration of large language models.
For most people, AI is a productivity tool: designers save time, content creators achieve automated copy refinement, and programmers significantly enhance coding efficiency.
However, we believe that AI is much more than a productivity booster; it represents a completely new paradigm of financial efficiency.
Human labor always incurs costs, and human attention is inherently limited. When AI enhances productivity per unit of time, it simultaneously elevates the value of attention during non-working hours. Therefore, we believe that AI and blockchain are inherently compatible and should become core components of the next generation of on-chain economy.
This is precisely the intention behind our creation of SpoonOS.
SpoonOS is a General Agentic Operating System, whose usability rivals all existing AI agent development frameworks on the market.
However, because we view AI as a catalyst for financial efficiency, SpoonOS has been deeply integrated with Web3 from its inception, possessing self-awareness and internal collaboration capabilities, aiming to build a truly Sentient Economy.
This aligns with the trajectory of development following the human industrial revolution: technological revolution → enhancement of production efficiency → transformation of financial and economic systems.
The future of the on-chain economy envisioned by SpoonOS is precisely such an era.

Three Core Characteristics of the Next Generation On-Chain Economy

1. Minimized Human Participation In on-chain economic activities, humans will primarily act as intention providers, while the system autonomously completes the analysis, execution, and feedback loop based on those intentions. Taking decentralized finance (DeFi) as an example: the so-called "composability" initially required users to invest significant effort in validating strategy combinations; in the new on-chain economy, AI will autonomously handle reasoning and planning.
2. Complete Trustlessness Asset security is the foundation of usability. In the Web3 space, security issues have always loomed like the sword of Damocles. The next generation of the economy must completely eliminate users' security concerns and create truly trustless systems.
3. Extreme Efficiency As mentioned earlier, every technological revolution is accompanied by leaps in efficiency. Web3 has significantly surpassed traditional finance in transaction and settlement efficiency, but there remains enormous potential in terms of capital utilization. The deep integration of AI will elevate capital efficiency to unprecedented heights.

Core Components Supporting These Structural Features

1. Rapidly iterating AI large model foundation (new architectures and open-source models emerging almost daily)
2. Intention-centric AI agents that accurately interpret and execute user intentions
3. AI agent networks that enable communication and collaboration between agents, forming collaborative clusters
4. Privacy computing technologies (such as zero-knowledge proofs ZKP / fully homomorphic encryption FHE) that ensure data security without a centralized trust mechanism
5. Fundamental security components that provide maximum protection for assets (such as trusted execution environments TEE and backtracking verification)
6. Sustainable monitoring systems that continuously oversee economic activities and possess self-diagnosis and self-correction capabilities

These components together form the backbone of SpoonOS, while global Web3 and AI developers serve as its lifeblood. The synergy between the two will give birth to a truly organic, evolvable, and self-driven on-chain economy ------ which we define as a genuine Sentient Economy. All of this goes far beyond simply building a faster system or rearranging toolsets.
The on-chain economy has never been merely a pile of technology. More accurately, it is a collective narrative about value creation, distribution, and cognition, concerning collaboration, order, and consensus.
With the deep integration of AI agents, AI is no longer just an external tool for efficiency enhancement; it becomes an intrinsic structural component ------ possessing intentions, logic, preferences, and even goals. This structural transformation is far more profound than the technological advancements themselves. We are transitioning from human activity-centric on-chain systems to a collaborative intelligence-driven network system.
Thus, the economy is no longer just a combination of rules and incentives; it begins to exhibit coherent, life-like characteristics: perceiving external data, responding internally, adjusting parameters, and reorganizing and iterating under pressure.
What we refer to as the Sentient Economy does not imply the birth of emotions or consciousness, but rather the gradual perfection of the information-action feedback loop within the system. This means that collaboration no longer relies on external scheduling but can naturally emerge from within the system. This marks a directional shift in the foundational infrastructure of human civilization ------ from merely "governing the economy" to "embedding intelligence into the economy."
We often discuss the on-chain economy from the perspectives of structural design and financial efficiency, but perhaps what truly deserves rethinking is: when a system possesses the ability for continuous autonomous learning, adaptation, and self-collaboration, should we still simply define it as "economy"? Or is it evolving into a completely new form of life?