It is abundantly clear that AI slop is here to stay. We’re in an era of cheap, disposable, shallow content so generic that it barely holds anyone’s attention anymore. Worse, the flood of AI generated slop will only grow, fragmenting our already shattered attention, eroding trust in platforms, and burying the important stuff in an ocean of noise.
In this world, authenticity, and exclusivity become rare commodities. Original data, unique insights and cutting edge research will stand out — and those who possess them will own the market for information. Paywalls, exclusive memberships, and private marketplaces aren’t new — but they’ll become more prominent when the web is awash with useless drivel. Human curated marketplaces will likely be the new norm. Journalism, too, stands to gain because the demand for real information will spike. Meanwhile social media will plunge further into disrepute, thanks to algorithmic biases amplifying controversial AI noise.
But there’s another twist. We won’t be the only ones browsing the internet. We’ll have AI powered agents, as openAI’s recent deep research showed, automating everything from reading the news to scanning for deals on marketplaces. These bots will sift through unimaginable volumes of data, and may hit paywalled sources billions of times. Traditional payment rails, built for human scales, simply can’t handle that scale of micro-transactions.
And that is crypto’s moment.
Storage blockchains like Arweave, paired with high speed networks like Solana can process enormous volumes of micropayents. Instead of wrestling with clunky subscriptions, agents will pay fractional feeds of whatever data lakes it dips into.
A world where machines buy data from machines, all day long, is closer than we think.
And ironically, AI — a force that promises to unlock all information — may end up gating more knowledge than before.
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