Web3 was not designed for people in scale; It was built for machines. Its complexity has limited its adoption, but the “Postweb” stack takes shape with AI agents who emerge as autonomous economic actors.
Smart contracts, decentralized networks and verifiable calculation will remain. But now they are optimized for AI-driven performance, coordination and intention-based automation.
The question is not whether it happens, but how fast we have to adapt.
In the last decade we have beta-tested decentralized systems and applications. While millions of people engage in blockchain networks, defi protocols and decentralized applications (DAPPS), the reality is that web3 remains hugely under -utilized.
Despite approx. 10% of the world that allegedly owns Krypto, only a fraction of these holders use actively decentralized applications as a real alternative to web2 or centralized platforms. This interruption is not due to a lack of capacity in web3 technology, but rather its applicability challenges and inherent complexity.
Afterwards, web3 was never designed for human users in scale. It was designed for machines.
Now, with AI agents who emerged as autonomous economic actors, the sleeping giant of the web3 functionality wakes up. “Post Web” – an expression we invented at Outlier Ventures – creates a world where agents perform tasks, manage assets and act on our behalf. Each component of the web3 stack is reused. When it is hindered by complexity, the infrastructure built into a decentralized world is now ideally suitable for an internet optimized for machines.
AI agents not only use web3. They will unlock all its potential.
The giant wakes up
Web3 has been misunderstood. Many expected it would be a more decentralized version of web2 where users own their assets, participate in governance and interact with permitted applications.
In practice, web3 has revolutionized back-end systems. Yet its technology is still too complicated for the average user to handle. Smart contracts, self -defense and brodity formation across chains requires time, effort and technical understanding that most simply do not have.
This is where AI agents change everything. Unlike humans, agents thrive in complexity. They can process huge amounts of information, automate intricate workflows and operate seamlessly over decentralized networks. While human users are struggling with onboarding, agents can directly integrate with smart contracts, optimize efficiency and perform transactions without friction.
For the first time, web3 will have users who can fully exploit its opportunities. AI agents will be seamlessly interacting with decentralized infrastructure, which allows web3 to function on the scale it was always intended for.
Post Web Tech Stack: Built for Machines
Web3 has spent the last decade building decentralized infrastructure without considering AI. With the increase of autonomous AI agents, our thinking about this stack must change fundamentally.
In the PostNET, where AI agents replace people as primary users, the stack reviews two critical transformations:
- Optimization of existing Web3 Stack for AI-Agent upgrading of decentralized infrastructure to support machine-driven transactions, intention and autonomous coordination.
- Build one new Agentic layer on top – a new calculation and coordination layer for hosting, management and orchestration of AI agents handling social and economic activity on behalf of users.
In our wider work at Outlier Ventures on Post Web, we have examined this development in more detail. In short, Post Web Stack consists of three core layers, each of which is important to activate an internet that is optimized for machines.
1) Agent layer: AI as the new interface
In the post network, users do not have to navigate wallets, exchanges or dapps themselves; AI agents will do it for them. These agents act as personalized digital intermediaries, perform transactions, manage assets and make complex financial decisions.
In order for this to work, the agent layer will be the bridge between intention and execution. Users will express intentional goals at high level and goals, such as investing in assets, reserving travel or negotiating contracts, and agents will handle the rest.
Smart wallets will develop into sovereign identity nodes, store personal data, assets and permits, allowing agents to trade with precision. This shift means that instead of relying on centralized platforms, individuals will delegate actions to superb AI, giving them full control while eliminating the need for direct interaction with complex systems.
Agentic layers are the greatest option for green field for bold founders who have wanted and the ability to combine probable AI capacities with deterministic smart contracts and DLT. There is a need for marketplaces, coordination layers, frameworks and more that everyone needs to be developed and improved.
2) Confidence: Smart Contracts & DLT as a backbone
If AI agents are to perform tasks in the real world, they need deterministic, verifiable environments where transactions and agreements can be enforced without ambiguity. This is where blockchain and smart contracts become critical.
Today’s AI models work on probable logic. Based on training data, they predict the next most likely result. However, financial transactions require security and enforcement: a bank transfer, legal contract or trade must be performed with absolute finality.
Smart contracts give this missing piece. They offer unchanging, self-executing agreements that allow AI agents to carry out economic activity with complete transparency and verifiability. More importantly, decentralized headbooks ensure that agent -driven transactions are secure, permitted -free and confidence minimized, preventing manipulation or central control over digital economies.
In short, the Post Web cannot work without the confidence of decentralized networks. Agents need verifiable execution environments, and web3 just gives it.
The change is clear to those who build in web3 today: Your infrastructure must be agent friendly. Protocols that enable composibility, trouble -free execution and verifiable data will surpass those who are dependent on fragmented, manual processes. In a map, the startup rule book develops rapidly.
3) Infrastructure layer: Compute, Data & Depin
AI agents not only need smart contracts; They need resources. They require computing power, storage and access to decentralized data networks to function autonomously. This is where decentralized physical infrastructure network (depin) comes into play.
Depin delivers on-demand computing, storage and bandwidth, allowing agents to function on a scale without relying on centralized cloud providers. Instead of a pair of hyperscalers such as AWS or Google Cloud that controls AI Compute distributes Depin these resources across permission -free networks, optimizing costs, accessibility and resilience.
This layer ensures that AI agents are not just participants in digital economies. They are sovereign devices capable of operating without centralized gate guards. From decentralized GPU networks such as Akash and Render to Permission -Free Data Exchange as Ocean Protocol, the infrastructure for the agent’s autonomy is already formed.
Startups building in the Post Web era should consider how their products are integrated with decentralized calculation and storage markets. AI-first applications will require cheap, scalable and permitted-free infrastructure, and the projects that give it will be fundamental to the new economy.
Outside of these three layers, there are several granular components, such as privacy -enhancing technologies, modularity, middleware, scaling mechanisms and so on, all of which fall into one or more of these categories that we discuss detailed in our other work.
The Internet is rewritten
For decades, the Internet has been built around human interfaces, platforms, apps and centralized portguards dictating how we interact with digital services. That era ends.
Post Web Stack not only improves web3; It redefines it to a world where AI agents are the primary users. With an agent layer for execution, a confidence layer for verifiable and a decentralized infrastructure layer for scale and resilience, we witness the emergence of an autonomous, machine -driven internet.
This is not the next version of the Internet; It is the disappearance of the web as we know it. The question is not whether this shift will happen, but whether you are building for it.
