Author: ODIG Invest

Web3 is undergoing a profound "back-end" change.

For mainstream users, they will only need to focus on payment, transactions and account management in the future; while blockchain, smart contracts and settlement networks will gradually disappear into the perception layer, just like databases and cloud computing.

Back-end is the technical form, SaaS is the business model.

But the real question is no longer "will Web3 become the backend?"

But the question is: when Web3 becomes the backend, is it building the foundation for a decentralized world? Or will it be absorbed by “fintech”?

The issues that need most discussion are:

With the back-end trend of Web3, what other tracks are full of opportunities?

1. Analysis of Web3 backend trends under cyclical rotation

Before discussing back-end trends and track opportunities, we need to sort out the changes in several cycles:

With the innovation of the bull market and the reflection of the bear market, each round of innovation focus aims to solve the bottleneck of the previous cycle and ultimately promote the next round of growth;

From 2017 to 2021, it mainly solves the problem of programmability (smart contracts); from 2021 to 2023, it initially solves the problem of scalability; from 2023 to now, it has been solving the problem of "practicality", and differentiation occurs here.

Technology evolution follows the spiral path of "infrastructure/protocol → application → infrastructure optimization", ultimately achieving mature integration of technology.

This is consistent with the following positive cycle:

Infrastructure improvement → Possibility of asset innovation → Product experience improvement → Expansion of user scale → Enhanced infrastructure demand.

We observe the value flow direction of the entire Web3 industry from the aspects of infrastructure, assets, and products:

• Infrastructure layer: Provides underlying technology and protocols, and value capture comes from network effects and protocol fees

• Asset layer:Create and exchange value carriers, and value capture comes from asset issuance and circulation

• Product layer:Connect users and value, and value capture comes from user experience and scale effect

Among them, there is an inverse relationship between technical complexity and user distance:

• Technical complexity:Infrastructure layer > Asset layer > Product layer

• User awareness:Product layer > Asset layer > Infrastructure layer

The essence of Web3 back-end is complexity abstraction: shielding the underlying details through standardized interfaces and directly addressing the user experience.

This is the inevitable professional division of labor in the maturation process of the industry - the more underlying technology, the more specialization is needed; the more user-side, the more simplification and abstraction are needed.

The reason why there is unprecedented convergence at present is because the key driving forces required for Web3 backendization have all appeared in this cycle:

• User experience:Traditional mnemonics and Gas operations hinder large-scale adoption, and the maturity of infrastructure and technology makes the experience close to Web2;

• Compliance requirements:Regulatory frameworks such as the FIT21 Act impose specific requirements on issuers, and the compliance layer is background-based;

• Practical needs:AI agents and automated economies require touchless payments and settlements;

In the "front-end" part, AI is becoming the dominant interaction paradigm in the future.

So, what kind of problems can Web3 solve in the next cycle based on the irreplaceability of the technology itself? Where are the track opportunities and entrepreneurial directions?

2. The irreplaceable core of Web3 technology

What are the irreplaceable qualities of Web3 technology? It can be summarized as:

• Macro level: decentralized trust infrastructure (trust minimization mechanism, global settlement layer attributes, no single control point)

• Meso level: programmable value network (smart contract automation, Tokenomics, composable Lego)

• Micro level: cryptographic primitives and technology stack

The current Web3 is retreating from "assets" and "narrative" to "the underlying protocol layer of settlement, identity and trust".

a16z clearly stated this shift in "Big Ideas 2026": the future of Web3 is not in the front end, nor in replacing Web2 products, but in becoming the back-end infrastructure. Next, macro-finance, AI Agent, and the transaction infrastructure represented by high-performance chains will be the key for Crypto to truly reach large scale.

Corresponding to the aforementioned "differentiation and integration", Web3 is a mature diversified ecology that will differentiate into two directions:

• Financial technology: This is the direction of the integration of Mass Adoption and Web2, which may make Web3 a new SaaS and belong to "financial technology".

• Native assetization: Based on the concept of "decentralization", it continues to generate native innovation on the chain, which is more front-end than the infrastructure layer.

3. Track opportunities and entrepreneurial directions under the back-end trend

From the perspective of infrastructure, assets and products, sort out potential Web3 track opportunities and entrepreneurial directions.

3.1 Infrastructure Side

Under the Web3 back-end trend, infrastructure and protocol layer projects have the greatest potential for value capture, especially the middleware layer for cross-chain interoperability and AI integration.

Public chains should abandon the homogeneous TPS competition and turn to vertical scenarios such as AI and payment to create dedicated chains with differentiated back-end value.

(1) Web3 Business/Programmable Payment：

Stablecoins will handle trillions of dollars in transaction volume in 2025, proving that "programmable money" has officially moved from laboratory theory to large-scale commercial practice.

Based on the programmable features of stablecoins, the business model is undergoing underlying changes:

• Automated execution: relying on smart contracts to achieve automatic rebates and condition-triggered dividends without manual intervention.

• Crowdfunding and distribution: The integration of capital flow and business flow has reshaped the transparency of crowdfunding and benefit distribution.

• Agent-based interaction: The ideal business form will be made by AI or intelligent agents, ensuring instant fulfillment of contracts through code.

Value capture will focus on two directions: lowering the threshold and reshaping distribution. You can focus on: Programmable payment and commerce:

• Agentic Commerce based on stable currency realizes automatic rebates and crowdfunding through smart contracts. Priority will be given to products that have huge traffic entrances and can use the Web3 protocol to reshape distribution logic, and return benefits to contributors in a more fair and transparent distribution protocol.

• Account abstraction (AA) middleware: Account abstraction middleware eliminates the entry barrier for non-native users through a touch-free experience. For example, it supports direct login with Web2 accounts, and smart contract wallets are automatically generated in the background. In addition, it may also spawn a new batch of on-chain service providers/consulting agencies for traditional enterprises.

(2) Privacy Computing

At present, there is a lack of enterprise-level privacy computing protocol standards, but institutional-level privacy needs are clear, and Web3 technology has a high moat in this field. You can pay attention to ZK co-processor, ZKP+AI fusion, private AI computing network, etc.

(3)DePIN 2.0

DePIN track retains the reconstruction of production relationships and new models for coordinating resources. Focus on areas such as AI computing power networks, energy grid optimization, geospatial data collection, and the “financialization” of hardware mortgages.

3.2 Asset Side

In the "Tokenization" stage, assets are "embedded", and the tokenized assets come from off-chain. Laws, breaches of contract, and bankruptcy all occur in the traditional system, and the on-chain is only for "distribution and display."

On the contrary, when power and risk coexist on the chain, and risks are generated on the chain, liquidated on the chain, and digested on the chain, then such Web3 native assets are difficult to back-end.

Web3 The most successful products are perpetual contracts, lending protocols, AMM, etc.

(1) Persistence of all things (Perpification)

From native assets to traditional financial assets, the trend of "comprehensive perpetual contracts" is emerging. "Perpetual contracts (Perps) are more in line with the product logic of the Web3 market than spot", and the core lies in the price anchoring and liquidation mechanism.

The success of Hyperliquid shows that with the combination of high-performance application chain (App-chain) and back-end native clearing, the native assets on the chain have a complete mechanism for self-liquidation, which is a feature that traditional financial systems cannot achieve.

PerpDEX track, perpetual contract trading market, and on-chain commodity market deserve long-term attention.

(2) Origin on-chain (Origination on-chain)

This is an important part of the integration with Web2 and RWA, and is suitable for top-down promotion by traditional giants. This requires assets to be born on the chain from the beginning, rather than just "on the chain".

For example, the on-chain credit agreement will conduct issuance, liquidation, and default processing on the entire chain, and complete it in the same programmable ledger.

Stablecoins will serve as a "patch" for banks' core ledgers, allowing traditional financial institutions to obtain real-time payments and programmability; RWA will become a "patch" for companies to issue assets and securities, deconstructing the inefficiencies of traditional asset issuance and introducing on-chain advantages.

Protocols/products that can provide better liquidity for the above assets will be opportunities worth paying attention to.

3.3 Product Side

(1) Compliance technology (RegTech) and solutions:

The size of the stablecoin/RWA and payments space is increasing at an unprecedented rate. According to a report by McKinsey and Artemis Analytics, the scale of stablecoin settlement on the chain last year was approximately US$35 trillion.

The stablecoin market is forming a "front-end non-custodial + back-end licensed" pattern. Faced with the dual pressures of heavy bank license costs and regulatory compliance, the industry urgently needs a "centered" solution.

This may require a "Stablecoin bank" role or a "new compliance interface" solution.

For example, Circle applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank license to build the Arc blockchain, coupled with Visa The cooperation constitutes a complete "front-end non-custodial + back-end licensed" ecology, which also shows that the industry is shifting from "RegulationFund Pool" to the "Regulatory Interface" model.

Under this paradigm, regulatory agencies may introduce some kind of global system: shifting from protocol-specific supervision to front-end-level regulation (Frontend-level Regulation), rather than the capital pool itself. In order to retain the advantages of borderlessness and low cost, while solving compliance issues.

(2) AI and boundary expansion:

The advancement of Web3 in the direction of DePIN, privacy computing and RWA makes Web3 the "trusted execution layer" of AI:

• AI is responsible for production: releasing production capacity through AIGC and intelligent agents.

• Web3 is responsible for liquidation: ensuring the capitalization of AI output through protocolized income distribution and rights confirmation.

Based on this, we can pay attention to Agent Economy, digital personality and AIGC rights confirmation.

In addition, with the increase of AI-native Builders, individuals not only use AI to expand production capacity, but also need to use on-chain tools to solidify accumulated assets. This may give rise to new dedicated blockchain environments, as well as developer communities and service platforms for AI.

In the further future, the top logic of future competition will be: how the top resource owners of human society (such as OpenAI, NVIDIA, etc.) will use Web3 technology to push the boundaries of AI to every corner of the real economy and digital civilization.

(3) Financial entertainment

In the direction of financial entertainment, there is the possibility of shifting from pure financial applications to consumer scenarios. The combination of AI with consumer-level scenarios such as social networking and games will bring about a larger user scale.

a16z’s latest data shows that applications with strong AI interactive attributes (such as AI companions and AI creation tools) exhibit a “smile curve”—that is, after users are lost in the initial stage, they will have a very high second visit rate due to the iteration of AI capabilities and the accumulation of content.

Successful projects will have the user experience of Web2 (such as social login, legal currency deposit) and the value capture of Web3 (such as asset ownership, profit sharing agreement):

• Prediction Market

• AI-Native Gaming

• Socialized DeFi

• AI enhanced social platform