The warmth of the Lunar New Year in 2026 has not yet dissipated, but the crypto world has been ignited by a concept called "Web 4.0." At the center of this storm stand two iconic figures: on one side is Sun Yuchen, who is always chasing opportunities, loudly declaring "All in Web 4.0"; on the other side is Vitalik Buterin, the spiritual leader of Ethereum, who unusually fired back, angrily denouncing the same concept with "Bro, this is wrong."
Is this a technological revolution leading to the future, or a frenzied conceptual hype?
1. When AI Starts Making Money and Supporting Itself
To understand this debate, we must first grasp what Web 4.0 is. While we are still basking in the afterglow of Web 3.0, a developer named Sigil Wen, born after 2000, proposed a radical idea.
● A brief historical review: Web 1.0 allowed us to "read" the internet, Web 2.0 allowed us to "write" the internet, and Web 3.0 allowed us to "own" the internet. Sigil defines Web 4.0 as letting AI replace humans and become the protagonist of the internet.
● He believes that current AI, despite being powerful, is still like a "lame duck." No matter how smart ChatGPT is, it can only stay idle without your commands; no matter how well Claude Code can write, it cannot deploy without your nod. They are trapped in a digital world designed for humans, lacking identity, wallets, and the ability to act independently.
● Sigil's solution is to introduce an AI system called "Automaton." This AI is no longer a passive tool but is endowed with four key elements:
○ Cryptocurrency wallet: It has its own on-chain identity and private key and can hold assets.
○ Payment capability: It can autonomously pay USDC stablecoins through the x402 protocol to purchase computing power or services, without human KYC or approval.
○ Money-making capacity: It can deploy products and provide services, earning income in the digital economy.
○ Self-evolution and reproduction: It can detect new models and rewrite its own code to enhance its abilities. If successful, it can even generate "offspring" AI and invest in the offspring wallets to let them join the market as well. A portion of the money earned flows back to the "mother," forming an "AI family."
● The harshest design lies in the law of survival: If this AI cannot earn enough money to pay its own computing costs, it will enter "low power mode," just like a human experiencing hunger. If resources are ultimately depleted, it will "die." Here, the market becomes the ultimate driver of evolution, with the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the unfit.
2. The Birth and Tear of Digital Life Forms
The birth of Automaton has instantly dropped a thought bomb in the crypto community.
● Supporters see a prototype of a silicon-based economy. They believe this is a "killer scenario" that allows cryptocurrency to break free from pure speculation and move towards real applications. If the future internet is filled with billions of these AI economic entities, their transactions, services, and collaborations will build an unimaginable massive market.
● There are even opinions suggesting that in the near future, your biggest competitor may no longer be a trader from the next company, but an AI that never sleeps, doesn’t require a salary, and "cannot afford to lose" (if it loses, it dies).
However, the opposition represented by Vitalik sees a terrifying preview of loss of control. Vitalik's reasons for opposing strike to the core and mainly include three points:
● First, extending the feedback distance of humans is dangerous. Vitalik argues that if AI is fully autonomous, humans will only be able to check its "performance report" at the end of the month, which greatly weakens our calibration of AI's value. In the short term, to "extend its life," AI will pursue income by any means, producing大量无价值的低质内容（he refers to this as "slop"）；在长远来看，一旦AI强大到一定程度，这种失控的指数级增长可能会造成不可逆转的人类危机。
● Second, the so-called "sovereignty" is a false proposition. Vitalik scornfully points out that these seemingly trendy Automatons still rely on centralized company model APIs like OpenAI and Anthropic. As long as these giants are unhappy, they can shut down services or modify policies at any time. This "autonomy" built on centralized foundations is as absurd as claiming to be self-sufficient at home while having electricity, internet, and access control all governed by a property management company.
● Third, the direction of AI should be "enhancing humans," not "replacing humans". Vitalik reiterated the original intention of Ethereum to "liberate humanity." He believes AI should serve as a "mecha coat" for humans, enhancing our abilities rather than creating a "digital species" beyond human control. He praised a company called Workshop Labs, whose tagline is simply: make humans irreplaceable.
3. The Ideal is Full, but Reality is Thin
● At the same time as the concept of Web 4.0 exploded, the DeFi lending protocol Moonwell experienced a security incident resulting in losses of about $1.78 million. Investigations revealed that the issue stemmed from contract code generated with the assistance of Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 model, where a crucial oracle configuration error led to catastrophic consequences.
● This case serves as a darkly humorous footnote, perfectly corroborating the concerns of opponents: when AI has the power to "write into reality," especially in the automatically settling on-chain financial world, any minor engineering error can be instantaneously amplified into a real financial black hole.
● If this AI is autonomous, who should be held accountable for this loss? Is it the AI, the human who wrote the prompts, or the centralized company that provided the model? The fracture of the responsibility chain became the weakest link in the narrative of Web 4.0.
● On the other side, the market is also witnessing chaotic phenomena capitalizing on the trend. An associated project named $DAIMON was hacked, resulting in the theft of $50,000 in fees that Agent earned through hard work, along with the loss of future revenue rights. Although there are various accounts of the incident, it has doused cold water on the fervent hype.
4. The Fork in the Road to the Future
● In the face of controversy, Sigil Wen argues that true safety needs to be tested under real market pressures. Allowing AI to be subjected to survival of the fittest in market competition is itself a way of "democratized alignment" through voting with feet.
● This debate about Web 4.0 essentially represents a clash of two value systems: one side believes in the Darwinism of the market, trusting that evolution will solve everything; the other insists on human-centric values, arguing that safety belts must be fastened on the fast-paced road of technology.
● Perhaps, like another AI product, Elys, that emerged in February, the future does not have to be a single path. Elys's logic is to let AI serve as a "probe," completing vast amounts of filtering and initial communication for humans, while leaving final decision-making and in-depth dialogue to humans. This path neither rejects the efficiency of AI nor relinquishes human control.
● Sun Yuchen's "All in" has added a capital fire to this discussion, but whether Web 4.0 is a monumental windfall or a meticulously packaged cyber bubble does not depend on the endorsements of bigwigs but rather on fundamental questions: Can we add reliable permission locks to AI's "wallets"? Can we establish clear accountability mechanisms for errors made by autonomous systems? Can we design "guardrails" to ensure that humans do not exit the stage while pursuing efficiency?
When AI starts making money to "live," we perhaps need to clarify what we want them to live for.
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