Web3 wasn’t designed for humans at scale; it was built for machines. Its complexity has limited its adoption, but the “Post Web” stack is taking shape with AI agents emerging as autonomous economic actors.

Smart contracts, decentralized networks, and verifiable computation will remain. But now they are being optimized for AI-driven execution, coordination, and intent-based automation.

The question isn’t whether it’s happening but how fast we need to adapt.

For the past decade, we have been beta-testing decentralized systems and applications. While millions of people engage with blockchain networks, DeFi protocols, and decentralized applications (dApps), the reality is that Web3 remains vastly underutilized.

Despite approximately 10% of the world allegedly owning crypto, only a fraction of these holders actively use decentralized applications as a real alternative to Web2 or centralized platforms. This disconnect isn’t due to a lack of capability in Web3 technology, but rather its usability challenges and inherent complexity.

In hindsight, Web3 was never designed for human users at scale. It was designed for machines.

Now, with AI agents emerging as autonomous economic actors, the sleeping giant of Web3 functionality is waking up. The “Post Web” — a term we coined at Outlier Ventures — creates a world where agents execute tasks, manage assets, and transact on our behalf. Every component of the Web3 stack will be repurposed. Once hindered by complexity, the infrastructure built for a decentralized world is now ideally suited for an internet optimized for machines. 

AI agents will not just use Web3. They will unlock all of its potential.

The Giant Awakens

Web3 has been misunderstood. Many expected it to be a more decentralized version of Web2, where users own their assets, participate in governance, and interact with permissionless applications.

In practice, Web3 has revolutionized back-end systems. As yet, its technology remains too complex for the average user to handle. Smart contracts, self-custody, and bridging across chains, require time, effort, and technical understanding that most people simply don’t have.

This is where AI agents change everything. Unlike humans, agents thrive in complexity. They can process vast amounts of information, automate intricate workflows, and operate seamlessly across decentralized networks. While human users struggle with onboarding, agents can directly integrate with smart contracts, optimize for efficiency, and execute transactions without friction.

For the first time, Web3 will have users who can fully leverage its capabilities. AI agents will seamlessly interact with decentralized infrastructure, allowing Web3 to operate at the scale it was always meant to.

The Post Web Tech Stack: Built for Machines

Web3 has spent the past decade building decentralized infrastructure without considering AI. With the rise of autonomous AI agents, our thinking about this stack must fundamentally change.

In the Post Web, where AI agents replace humans as primary users, the stack undergoes two critical transformations:

Optimizing the existing Web3 stack for AI agents – Upgrading decentralized infrastructure to support machine-driven transactions, intent execution, and autonomous coordination.

Building out a new agentic layer on top – A new computational and coordination layer for hosting, managing, and orchestrating AI agents that handle social and economic activity on behalf of users.

In our broader work at Outlier Ventures on the Post Web, we’ve examined this evolution in greater detail. Put simply,, the Post Web stack consists of three core layers, each essential for enabling an internet optimized for machines.

1) The Agentic Layer: AI as the New Interface

In the Post Web, users won’t have to navigate wallets, exchanges, or dApps themselves; AI agents will do it for them. These agents act as personalized digital intermediaries, executing transactions, managing assets, and making complex economic decisions.

For this to work, the Agentic Layer will be the bridge between intent and execution. Users will express intent-based, high-level goals and objectives, such as investing in assets, booking travel, or negotiating contracts, and agents will handle the rest.

Smart wallets will evolve into sovereign identity hubs, storing personal data, assets, and permissions, allowing agents to act with precision. This shift means that instead of relying on centralized platforms, individuals will delegate actions to sovereign AI, giving them complete control while eliminating the need for direct interactions with complex systems.

The agentic layer is the largest green-field opportunity for bold founders who have the desire and ability to combine probabilistic AI capabilities with deterministic smart contracts and DLT. There is a need for marketplaces, coordination layers, frameworks, and more, all of which need to be developed and improved.

2) The Trust Layer: Smart Contracts & DLT as the Backbone

If AI agents are to execute real-world tasks, 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 operate on probabilistic logic. Based on training data, they predict the next most likely outcome. However, economic transactions require certainty and enforceability: a bank transfer, legal contract, or trade must be executed with absolute finality.

Smart contracts provide this missing piece. They offer immutable, self-executing agreements, allowing AI agents to conduct economic activity with complete transparency and verifiability. More importantly, decentralized ledgers ensure that agent-driven transactions are secure, permissionless, and trust-minimized, preventing manipulation or central control over digital economies.

In short, the Post Web cannot function without the trust layer of decentralized networks. Agents need verifiable execution environments, and Web3 provides precisely that.

The shift is clear for those building in Web3 today: Your infrastructure must be agent-friendly. Protocols that enable composability, seamless execution, and verifiable data will outperform those relying on fragmented, manual processes.In short, the startup rule book is evolving rapidly.

3) The Infrastructure Layer: Compute, Data & DePIN

AI agents don’t just 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 Networks (DePIN) come into play.

DePIN provides on-demand computing, storage, and bandwidth, allowing agents to operate at scale without relying on centralized cloud providers. Instead of a few hyperscalers like AWS or Google Cloud controlling AI compute, DePIN distributes these resources across permissionless networks, optimizing for cost, accessibility, and resilience.

This layer ensures that AI agents aren’t just participants in digital economies. They are sovereign entities capable of operating without centralized gatekeepers. From decentralized GPU networks like Akash and Render to permissionless data exchanges like Ocean Protocol, the infrastructure for agentic autonomy is already forming.

Startups building in the Post Web era must consider how their products integrate with decentralized compute and storage markets. AI-first applications will demand cheap, scalable, and permissionless infrastructure, and the projects that provide it will become foundational to the new economy.

Outside these three layers, there are more granular components such as privacy-enhancing technologies, modularity, middleware, scaling mechanisms, and so on, which all broadly fall under one or more of these categories, which we discuss in detail in our other work.

The Internet Is Being Rewritten

For decades, the Internet has been built around human interfaces, platforms, apps, and centralized gatekeepers that dictate how we interact with digital services. That era is ending.

The Post Web stack doesn’t just improve Web3; it redefines it into a world where AI agents are the primary users. With an agentic layer for execution, a trust layer for verifiability, and a decentralized infrastructure layer for scale and resilience, we are witnessing the rise of an autonomous, machine-driven internet.

This isn’t the next version of the Web; it’s the disappearance of the Web as we know it. The question isn’t whether this shift will happen but whether you are building for it.