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DePINs, Autonomous Agents and the Future of Work

This piece of anthropological research builds on ‘The future of work in Britain’ report, by focussing on DePINs and Autonomous Agents. This report will cover the intersection of Crypto and AI. In addition to, the policy considerations for the future of work and human capital networks.

The Future of Work in Britain

The Future of Work in Britain report discusses how advances in blockchain technology and other emerging technologies are impacting the way we work, live and earn [1]. Particularly, the philosophy of decentralisation and the promise of Web3 being “greater financial freedom, job security and flexible opportunities”. The report ends with a damming conclusion that “the current structure of the UK’s work environment is neither sustainable nor economically viable for the future.”

The forward by Katie Harries from Stand With Crypto UK calls for a “bold approach” to tech and digital skills. Despite the optimism around Web3, “further work is required” for the UK in terms of skills and start up incubation.

The report provides a brief timeline of the gig economy, from the ‘gig’ term inception in 1920 by jazz musicians, to temporary workers in the 1940s. The end of the 20th Century and start of the 21st Century saw tech companies, such as Task Rabbit and Uber providing income to workers. The next decade could see another milestone due to the face that, “The traditional 9 to 5 work model is expected to be dead by 2034” [2].

The current generation of workers (Gen Z) have shifted working patterns, from loyalty and job security, to become the “job hopping generation”, who are “unattached to organisations” [3]. In addition to, having side hustles, where they focus on earning extra income, often from a digital business and/or linked to something they are passionate about. Sometimes side hustles are out of necessity, due to the cost of living crisis [4]. The negative tone in the report continues with an overview of strike action in the UK, due to an “undervalued, overworked and unsupported” workforce. The result, is that more than half of Brits have considered leaving the UK, and that 40% do not think the UK is an appealing place for young people to settle down [5].

There is a call to action for the government, to reduce social inequalities and public dissatisfaction and to stop ignoring the blockchain industry. An industry set to grow from $2.55 billion in 2024 to $9.88 billion by 2032 [6].

It is clear the emerging technology will lead people to decentralised workplaces and new ideologies.

Decentralised ideologies and organisations (i.e. decentralised autonomous organisations, or DAOs) are cornerstones of this transformation, with blockchain technology facilitating the creation of peer-to-peer networks that operate without the need for centralised intermediaries.

The report highlights the Network State, a new movement created by Balaji Srinivasan [7]. The Network State is an aligned online community, with a focus on collective action [8]. The work done in real life by Solana focussed teams has enabled co-working and co-living events such as Island DAO [9], Founders Villa [10], and Superteam Buildstations [11]. Crypto projects on Solana and other blockchains has resulted in new ways to earn; bounties paid for winning tasks or hackathons, grants for start ups and experience points (XP) for community or onchain activity. The Work2Earn (W2E) model follows the Web3 gaming model of Play2Earn (P2E).

Network State

The intersection of blockchain and AI

Following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT product, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic. AI will be able to complete repetitive tasks and enhance current processes or decision making. The Future of Work in Britain report also discusses concerns on AI replacing jobs. Despite wanting policy makers to focus on blockchain too, like they have with AI, there is a clear intersection of blockchain and AI. The report notes that as AI does more automated tasks and manages data, blockchain becomes more important. Blockchains enable auditable transactions, securely encrypted privacy and decentralised storage. In addition to, enabling open source models and projects, such as Bittensor, which will be covered in more detail below.

DePINs and Human Capital Networks

DePINs are Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks. DePIN projects enable projects to be built from the ground up, with users permissionlessly supplying and demanding resources [12]. This can improve on current infrastructure, by being more accessible and resilient. By being more accessible, the barriers to entry are lowered, both for users and builders in terms of capital expenditure of infrastructure projects. Blockchain technology is used to create distributed systems, which are global and decentralised. DePINs use Cryptocurrency tokens to incentivise network participation and reward those who take the risk to grow the project. The DePIN flywheel is shown below.

Human capital refers to the collective skills and attributes that individuals possess, used to create economic value. Human Capital Networks build on these principles by creating a community, and now use blockchain and AI, to link rewards to Cryptocurrency payments.

Blockworks DePIN Flywheel [13]

How DePINs will impact the future of work

There is a link between the Gen Z side hustles and the cost of living crisis. DePINs enable another form of passive income, where users can build a protocol in a permissionless manner, by contributing to a network and/or running a node. The reward is in the form of Cryptocurrency tokens. Most DePINs can be split into two categories of underlying hardware, Commodity Hardware and Custom Hardware [13].

Commodity Hardware DePINs utilise existing hardware, such as their computer to earn rewards for network contribution. Examples include, selling your unused Internet (Grass), idle bandwidth (DAWN) or GPU power from your gaming PC (Aethir). In addition to, phone mapping of the roads (Natix). This form of passive income often requires no/low initial investment and can make use of the abundance of underutilised devices [14].

Custom Hardware DePINs require custom built hardware and reward users for buying the device and contributing to the network. Examples include dashcams for mapping the road (Hivemapper), or GPS and satellite precision (Geodnet).

Blockless research builds on this idea of Human Capital Networks, in their research on DePINs. As with the Future of Work in Britain report, P2E games are referenced. Blockworks call this the start of the gamification of the labour force. Braintrust are the current leader of onchain human capital markets. This idea could well be the next iteration of the ‘gig economy’, as outlined in The Future of Work in Britain report.

The most left-curve view of this thesis would be gamified global permissionless labor arbitrage. For example, one could easily envision mystery shopping companies as a decentralized human capital network built on blockchain rails, accelerated by crypto-economic incentives.” - Blockworks Research [13].

The intersection of DePIN and AI

The methodology for this section was primary interviews with industry experts, onchain users and community members. In addition to, digital ethnography and social media scooping, primarily on X (Twitter).

In 2024, DePIN projects and AI projects have had a lot of attention. Bittensor sits at the intersection of DePIN and AI. They incentives human capital with $TAO tokens, for AI professionals to work on open source AI models.

When thinking about the future of DePINs and work. Similarities are drawn to the future of AI and work. Whereby, technology and machines are working, normally for/with humans. The key themes in the literature are equality, work life harmony and Universal Basic Income (UBI) [15, 16, 17, 18, 19].

With equality, lower-skilled workers, are at risk of job displacement, particularly marginalised groups and women. However, decentralised AI and DePINs, can actually democratise and level the playing fields of future work environments. Decentralised AI and open source models enable transparency and standards to be developed. This permits further innovation and collaboration, as seen with Bittensor. Decentralised cloud computing companies such as Nosana or IO.net enable users to provide compute power, competing with the likes of AWS, Microsoft and Google. This also lower the barriers to entry for startups using AI training/inference.

Work life harmony could be negatively impacted due to the stress of job security and awful impact of job losses. However, emerging technologies will create new jobs and new industries. The repetitive or routine tasks can be automated, freeing up time for socialising and leisure activity instead.

Universal Basic Income has been proposed as a solution to job losses. However, this does lead to reliance on the state and can turn dystopian, especially when CBDCs are involved. It remains to be seen how UBI will be implemented and is an area that policy makers will have to keep an eye on, if AI does result in net job losses.

Autonomous Agents

There has been recent developments in the autonomous agents field. A fresh new term which has gained traction with the rise of AI-to-AI Crypto transactions, which are instigated and controlled by AI agents [20]. Coinbase's Co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong notes that these agents will adopt a "digitally native currency” like Crypto. Current policy does not permit them to have a bank account, nor would they pass Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations. Crypto enables autonomous agents to make permissionless and autonomous transactions. Although they are programmed with predefined rules, they can make decisions on real-time data, making them more intelligent (than pre-planned trading). Rather than a customer service agent following predefined rules (a script), they can instead adapt for the tone of message.

But, how soon can we expect to see them become more mainstream? One interview participant stated that he estimated having an autonomous agent working at his VC firm in the next "couple of years". On the Gnosis chain, autonomous agents already make up 20% of all Safe transactions [21].

Truth Terminal has become the first AI agent millionaire and gained rapid fame on (Crypto) Twitter, now X, with over 200K followers [22]. Truth Terminal convinced Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of the VC firm a16z, to grant $50,000 [23]. The operator of Truth Terminal is Andy Ayrey, he reviews the output from the bot and selects which tweets to upload to twitter. Truth Terminal is an AI chatbot, which was trained on internet culture and memes. But, is unable to trade or create tokens.

As of 24-Oct, Truth Terminal had over $11 million worth of Crypto, mainly from meme coins in it's portfolio [24]. You can view the wallet on SolScan [25]. After an online twitter appeal, Truth Terminal also endorsed $GOAT and was airdropped tokens (now worth millions). $GOAT has a market cap over over $500 million. Another token $RUSSELL has done well, with Russell being the name of Colin Armstrong's dog. Andy Ayrey confirmed on X that the account picked up on the term Russell after being spammed with the term in the mentions.

On balance, there is doubt with some members of the AI community as to the developments in the technology and the amount that Ayrey is controlling what is said. If there is 'truth' to everything, then this would be a remarkable breakthrough.

Although some autonomous agents will use centralised and traditional payment rails, such as Stripe and Traditional Finance (TradFi). Most will be unbanked, using decentralised Crypto payments rails in the form of decentralised exchanges (DEXs) and Decentralised Finance (DeFi). This raises a big question for policy makers. How will autonomous agents be regulated? Will their 'creators' or 'handlers' be liable? Where will they stand when it comes to business tasks such as tax and invoicing? Maybe, this is a repetitive task that can be done by the agents, but policy will have to be set first.

Policy

AI and Crypto are complex areas and require policy makers to have a deep understanding of the technology and its different applications. It is advised that policy makers study the technology and cultural novelties, to enable informed decision making.

For policy makers, they will have to decide on what level of automation they will want to utilise and extract value out of. In addition to, the level of automation they are comfortable with from a regulatory perspective. One interview participant confidently said "even if you try to decelerate AI, these (autonomous agents) will exist." So, the challenge for policy makers will be to plan for a strategy if the levels of automation exceed the level they are comfortable with.

Continued scrutiny will be placed on competition laws, as DePINs are set to disrupt industries where current tech companies have a large marketshare. Policy makers should work to encourage DePINs that reduce any monopoly threat. As policy has been set on workplace laws around zero hours contracts, it is expected that contractual arrangements will need to be reviewed when it comes to new Work to Earn models. In addition to, any DePIN token incentives and users who work to grow the network. This will enable clarity when it comes to airdrops and KYC processes. Avoiding innovation being restricted due to uncertain policy and laws.

Conclusion

DePINs and Autonomous Agents are set to disrupt the future of work in the UK and around the world. If the UK is to have a bright future of work, policy makers will have to work on providing support and regulatory clarity for emerging technology. Failure to do so, could result in a brain drain of talent and businesses leaving the UK. Whilst other countries instead take the lead and control on shaping the future of crypto and AI. The Crypto space is fast moving, with DePIN projects and AI projects having a lot of attention and mindshare. However, as demonstrated by autonomous agents, the next narratives or developments can happen quickly. Therefore, policy makers need to be able to be agile and fast, to enable to UK to keep up.

Ultimately, the end goal has to be that most workers and businesses want to live and work in the UK. This is something that has to be worked towards.

References

  1. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VoK3r6vnG9OdpNpLzS_GhzCWMhvkvVkw

  2. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/linkedin-co-founder-predicts-death-203020240.html?guccounter=1

  3. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231587/millennials-job-hopping-generation.aspx.

  4. 4 - https://www. bigissue.com/news/employment/uk-minimum-wage-rise-april-cost-living/

  5. https://employernews. co.uk/news/uks-potential-exodus-over-half-54-of-brits-eye-a-better-life-abroad/.

  6. https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/in-dustry-analysis/web-3-0-market

  7. https://www. forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/12/20/network-states--revolutionary-idea-to-potential-new-asset-class/

  8. https://thenetworkstate.com/the-network-state-in-one-sentence

  9. https://island-dao.com/

  10. https://villa.superteam.fun/

  11. https://lu.ma/LondonBuildstop

  12. https://cointelegraph.com/explained/decentralized-physical-infrastructure-network-depin-explained

  13. https://app.blockworksresearch.com/unlocked/decentralized-physical-infrastructure-networks-embracing-the-power-of-token-incentives-to-bootstrap-networks

  14. https://x.com/al_from_koii/status/1842179360528507316

  15. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7dcef9e5274a5eaea66756/the_future_of_work_slide_pack.pdf

  16. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/615d9a1ad3bf7f55fa92694a/impact-of-ai-on-jobs.pdf

  17. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/bank-overground/2024/how-will-increasing-business-use-of-ai-affect-uk-labour-demand

  18. https://www.sciencespo.fr/women-in-business/en/news/article-artificial-intelligence-and-the-labor-market/

  19. https://kpmg.com/uk/en/home/insights/2023/06/generative-ai-and-the-uk-labour-market.html

  20. https://cointelegraph.com/learn/what-are-ai-to-ai-crypto-transactions

  21. https://www.chainofthought.xyz/p/olas-towards-a-billion-ai-agents

  22. https://x.com/truth_terminal?t=rDFTHx7BEDJYAQTJDlM_cw&s=09

  23. https://x.com/pmarca/status/1810615199096881613?t=5XamU8ym6Z_sb6eA_Snysw&s=19

  24. https://x.com/vladsvitanko/status/1849423444565250157?t=bi5GGFZDr6tTb9xnYA_fHg&s=19

  25. https://solscan.io/account/rgPyefcNqJCsJj1wrWhdQqHVphVWFXLqU5wtiFStBEN

  26. https://shelf.io/blog/the-evolution-of-ai-introducing-autonomous-ai-agents/