Web4.0 Track Analysis: How AI Agents Build Autonomous Economic Infrastructure

According to BroadChain, at 14:16 on April 21, as reported by PANews, AI Agents are evolving from auxiliary tools into independent economic participants on the internet, a transformation that constitutes the core proposition of Web4.0. The traditional financial system structurally excludes machine-native behaviors and cannot meet the needs of Agents in areas such as account opening, contract signing, and micro-payment settlements. Permissionless blockchain networks provide an alternative path: wallets as identity, stablecoins as settlement, and smart contracts as rules. Currently, the infrastructure development for Web4.0 is being intensively advanced. At the protocol layer, the x402 payment standard, ERC-8004 identity standard, and MCP tool invocation protocol are filling critical gaps, collectively forming the minimum viable protocol stack required for Agents to function as independent economic entities. In terms of industry tracks, Bittensor and io.net offer decentralized computing power supply; Oasis ROFL integrates TEE at the ERC-8004 verification layer; Bank of AI (based on the TRON ecosystem) packages the x402 and 8004 protocols, MCP, Skills, and OpenClaw extensions into a one-stop Agent financial operating system; while Midaz demonstrates the Skills product form of "built for Agents, visualized for humans" at the application layer. From an investment perspective, Web4.0 is currently in a window of concentrated infrastructure development, with standards yet to be finalized and on-chain real commercial traffic still in the early validation stage, where the narrative overall leads implementation. The window for early positioning in underlying infrastructure is narrowing, and vertical application layers capable of transforming protocol capabilities into commercial closed loops will be the key opportunities in the next phase.