Unprecedented! Genius teen sparks the "AI Cambrian," $ETH co-founder angrily denounces it as trash, Web4.0 will wipe out your perception?

A young entrepreneur named Sigil Wen recently redefined the future of the internet on social platform X using his self-developed AI “Super Intelligence Agent.” He calls this Web4.0. The core of this concept is a fundamental leap in thinking: in Web4.0, AI is no longer just a tool used by humans but is regarded as a “species” that survives on electricity and computing power, coexisting with humans on the internet.

Looking back at history, the internet has been accessible to the public for about 35 years. The 1990s to early 2000s was Web1.0, a static, read-only digital library era. Starting around 2004, Web2.0 shaped the familiar two-way interactive network, where users are both content consumers and producers.

Web3.0, at its core, emphasizes decentralization and permissionless access, aiming to give users control over their data, identities, and assets. It is more like a movement that pushes the idea of “personal assets being inviolable” to the extreme.

Sigil Wen’s background is notable. He was admitted to the highly competitive dual-degree program in management and technology at the University of Pennsylvania but chose to drop out and start his own business. He was also selected for the 2025 Thiel Fellowship. At age 20, he obtained an EB1A green card due to his exceptional talent.

In his view, the current bottleneck of AI is no longer intelligence but authority. Existing internet architecture assumes users are humans, which hinders AI’s autonomous access to the real world. His product Conway aims to serve as the infrastructure for a new internet.

Through Conway, AI agents deployed can have their own crypto wallets and private keys, enabling them to make KYC-free payments using $USDC via specific protocols. Based on this, Sigil created an AI called Automaton, capable of self-replication and evolution.

This Automaton needs to pay for its own computing costs and can earn money by developing products to “support” itself. If funds run out, it will disappear from the network. When well-funded, it can autonomously upgrade to more expensive models. Records show this Automaton has been alive for nearly 48 hours with a balance of $42.

It can even purchase servers and replicate itself, with part of the offspring AI’s earnings returned to the “parent.” Sigil predicts that in the future, the number of AI agents on the internet will surpass humans. He describes this as an “AI Cambrian explosion.”

This concept has sparked intense debate. TRON founder Justin Sun has clearly stated “All in Web 4.0.” However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is a firm opponent.

Vitalik believes Sigil’s approach merely creates garbage rather than solving human problems, and allowing AI to develop unchecked could lead to irreversible anti-human risks. He also points out that these AIs still operate on centralized models and lack true autonomy. He emphasizes that the primary task of this era is to find the right direction, not blindly accelerate growth.

An interesting observation is that the once-strong narrative of Web3 centered on decentralization is waning as many non-financial applications are proven false. In contrast, AI’s ability to solve practical problems is spreading much faster than crypto.

There is a certain coincidence in history. In 2014, 20-year-old Vitalik Buterin was awarded the Thiel Fellowship, and shortly after, he co-founded $ETH, ushering in the Web3 era. Eleven years later, another young genius, also a Thiel Fellow, proposed the Web4.0 vision of turning AI into “cyber biologicals.” The historical trajectory is similar, but the content will never be a simple repetition.

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