The hottest technology topics in the past two years are AI and Web3.

The explosion of AI is visible. After ChatGPT, from models to products, from content generation to autonomous agents, the whole rhythm has shifted from "people teaching AI to do things" to "AI finding things to do itself". And after the heat of Web3 has subsided, it still retains the heat of building basic modules such as stablecoin payment, on-chain clearing, and RWA structure.

On the surface, they are two unrelated technical fields, one talking about intelligence and the other talking about decentralization. But more and more entrepreneurs and technical communities are beginning to realize that these two systems may be getting closer to each other, and even need each other.

The question is, do they really need each other? Or are they just two hot words trying to find a story to tell?

If you look at it from a structural perspective, the answer is actually very clear - AI is the first actor that can really use the Web3 system, and Web3 has finally found its most suitable service object.

Why does AI need Web3?

From another perspective, AI actually brings not only "new scenarios" to Web3, but also "new solutions to old problems."

Web3 has been trying to build a "trustless collaboration system" in recent years - allowing strangers and institutions to automatically settle and perform contracts, without relying on platform matchmaking, and without the need for cumbersome intermediaries and clearing processes. But the problem is that there has never been an object that really "just needs to use" this system.

Human users have too high requirements for user experience: wallets are difficult to use, gas fees are too expensive, transactions are too slow, KYC is complicated, plus regulatory risks and fund security issues, it is difficult for any ordinary user to be willing to complete tasks and settlements on the chain every day. As a result, many Web3 projects found that no one used them after completing the agreement, and they were idle.

But AI is different. AI does not need user experience, nor does it care about financial licenses and identity verification. It only cares about one thing: whether the task can be completed and whether the result can be paid.

This makes AI the most suitable collaboration partner for Web3 - not because it is "smarter", but because it naturally adapts to the "structured, programmable, and trustless" system of Web3.

Give me a few specific questions and you will know why AI is more suitable for Web3:

• When multiple AIs participate in a task at the same time, how to confirm who does better and how to share the rewards? Web3 can solve this problem through on-chain records and voting mechanisms;

• AIs do not know each other and have no credit endorsement, how to establish transactions? Web3's verifiable identity system can support this;

• Immediate settlement after the task is completed, without waiting for manual confirmation, the traditional banking system cannot do this, but Web3 can do it with stablecoins and smart contracts;

• Task data, execution process, and settlement vouchers all need to be fully recorded, and the Web3 on-chain evidence storage mechanism naturally has this capability.

In other words, AI's behavioral logic and collaborative path just forced Web3 to truly create a "system closed loop". Many of Web3's original concepts, such as "open finance", "intelligent collaboration", and "permissionless infrastructure", have never worked on humans in the past. Now, for the first time, the possibility of a structural closed loop has been found in AI.

It can even be said that Web3 has finally waited for the real user who "does not talk about experience, but only about structure" in AI. This is not evolution, but a return to fundamentalism.

Written at the end: The "0" in Web3.0 may be AI

We used to regard "Web3.0" as a vision, meaning "what the future Internet will look like", but few people seriously asked: What exactly does this ".0" refer to? What new variables can bring about qualitative changes in the entire system?

Now maybe we can try to answer: Web3.0 is not Web3 + NFT, not Web3 + DAO, and not Web3 + a certain VC-popular protocol, but Web3 + AI. It is not to cater to the market, but because the two are truly complementary in terms of structural logic.

AI has become an actor, an actor that does not need company registration, account opening authentication, or identity explanation. Web3 provides its only available account system, payment system, record system, and performance system - a set of infrastructure that allows it to participate in the market and operate independently.

If Web2 is a system designed for "people", then the structural characteristics of Web3 may not have been prepared for human users from the beginning, but a preview for another type of intelligent collaborator.

Web3 on the left hand and AI on the right hand are not running hot spot superposition, but a set of system logic that just catches each other.

This may be the real Web3.0.