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- Self Sufficiency Beyond Bitcoin - DePINs, DeSci & DeAI
Self Sufficiency Beyond Bitcoin - DePINs, DeSci & DeAI
3rd Generation Digital Self Sufficiency
TLDR;
1st Gen Digital Self Sufficiency - Bitcoin was the first element of digital self-sufficiency with Be Your Own Bank (BYOB)
2nd Gen Digital Self Sufficiency - DeFi at scale enabled Be Your Own Banker
3rd Gen Digital Self Sufficiency - 2025 is the year of DePIN, DeSci, and DeAI at scale
DePINs enable you to be your own service provider
DeSci enables you to be your own academic and researcher
DeAI enables you to create, own and train your own decentralised AI Agent
1st Generation Digital Self Sufficiency - Bitcoin (Be Your Own Bank)
In its purest form, self-sufficiency is having your own land, growing your own food and having your own water supply. In the digital world, things are slightly different, with decentralisation enabling self sufficiency in the Read, Write, Own era (Web3). After the whitepaper release in 2008, Bitcoin kickstarted digital self-sufficiency at scale, with Peer to Peer electronic cash. Bitcoin’s decentralisation and permissionless nature allows everyone to send and store money without a bank or 3rd party. A previously closed system became open, as Bitcoin enabled users to be their own bank.
2nd Generation Digital Self Sufficiency - DeFi (Be Your Own Banker)
After the whitepaper release in 2014, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) on Ethereum kickstarted the 2nd Generation of Digital Self Sufficiency, with permissionless lending and borrowing of digital currencies. DeFI enabled everyone to be their own banker at scale, permitting users to both receive loans and provide collateral to earn yield. Decentralised Applications (dApps) were built in a permissionless nature on the Ethereum Blockchain, as Ethereum enabled users to build their own bank and be their own banker.
3rd Generation Digital Self Sufficiency
Despite many DePIN, DeSci and DeAI projects launching many years ago, 2025 is the year of the 3rd Generation Digital Self Sufficiency at scale.
DePIN (Be Your Own Service Provider)
Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs) enables people to be their own service providers. DePINs have broken down the barrier to entry for new entrants to the supply side of industries such as Telecoms and Energy, where the big challenges is resource co-ordination. By using token incentives with permissionless crypto rails, and a decentralised global supply of nodes and users, DePINs are now achieving scale to compete with the big tech of Web2. Compute providers can become self sufficient by running their own node, with custom hardware. In addition to, making use of their commodity hardware, with edge devices such as gaming PC infrastructure used when not in use (instead of it being idle compute power). DePINs market cap as of 05-jan 2025 was $37.4bn [8].
DePINs are defined by having three properties (shown below), which enables everyone to earn passive income through the service they provide. The passive income further amplifies the self sufficiency.
A three-sided market - has an interface for the supply side, demand side and a customer interface.
Token-based incentives for supply - uses cryptocurrencies to incentivise users to contribute to the network supply.
Physical asset placement - the service has physical components
Read my previous blog on the 12 Mental Models for DePINs for more information.
Perhaps Web3 is not about the 3rd generation of the internet, in fact, it is about the 3 sided markets, like DePINs, which have permissionless participation of the supply, service and demand side.
DePIN Map by Messari [9]
DeSci (Be Your Own Researcher)
Decentralised Science (DeSci) is revolutionising academic research and capital deployment by enabling everyone to be their own academic and researcher. As with DePINs, DeSci has broken down the barrier to entry for new entrants to the supply side of science (who are not in that department of academia). Anyone can now contribute to research, vote on DAO proposals and invest in science in a permissionless manner. The incentives are more aligned with crypto tokenomics and as a result, Scientists can spend more time on research they want to do. This is opposed to researching and publishing the results the funders want, which is liable to fraudulent ‘science’. The Messari map below shows how DeSci is set to scale in 2025. As of 05-Jan 2025, DeSci’s market cap was $2.4 trillion [7].
DeSci Map by Messari [6]
DeAI (Be Your Own Agent Creator)
Decentralised AI (DeAI) is enabling people to build their own AI Agents. No code tools and open source protocols lowers the barriers to entry to AI for those without a technical background or vast financial resource. Decentralised AI blew up towards the end of 2024, with the AI Agent Truth Terminal becoming the first AI agent millionaire after endorsing the GOAT token on Twitter. Recent developments with Virtuals has enabled people to create their own AI Agent and provided a marketplace for agents. Recent developments with daosdotfun and AI16Z’s ELIZA framework has enabled people to create their own AI Agent fund. Like 1 billion unbanked humans, AI Agents can only use the permissionless nature of crypto rails, as they are unable to receive money and set up a bank account with traditional banks. As of 05-Jan 2025, AI coins had a market cap of $52.2bn and AI Agents had a market cap of $15.9bn [10]. DeAI is following the DeFI trajectory of 2nd Generation Self Sufficiency, as shown by the Messari chart below [11].
AI Agents trend vs DeFI trend [11]
AI Agents trend vs DeFi and NFTs [14]
Autonomous Agent Self Sufficiency
Autonomous AI agents will enable you to Be Your Own travel agent, financial advisor, risk analyst and excursion planner.
AI Agent interactions [14]
Linking DePIN, DeSci and DeAI
The intersection of DePIN and DeAI - IO net, a DePIN project providing decentralised compute, announced a partnership to provide compute for the AI Agent Zerebro on 19-Dec 2024.
The intersection of DePIN and DeSci - On 12-Dec 2024, Pulse, a DePIN wearable device, announced a partnership with pumpdotscience to provide verified human biometric data. Users are then rewarded for the data they provide and the success of the studies launched on pump science.
The intersection of DeSci and DeAI - DeSci World announced Proof of Knowledge (PoK), a shared knowledge layer for AI Agents to accelerate research in DeSci. This will reward knowledge contributions and lead to scientific breakthroughs. SpongeBot is the first AI agent using DeSci World’s PoK, and it launched using the Party Dao framework [13].
I created the above diagram using Miro, but I did attempt to use akashgen, a text to image generator for the venn diagram, but it did not work (see below). I guess I need to work on my prompt communication.
akashgen image generator [3]
Many thanks,
Appendix
Appendix 1
This blog was influenced by the DeSci India Venn Diagram below.
DeSci India Venn Diagram [4]