In 2019, I began to speak publicly about a concept I called re-decentralization. At the time, the narrative was already drifting. The cypherpunk ethos was being co-opted by a libertarian fervor that misunderstood the assignment. I argued then, as I do now, that the mission of Web3 was never about removing the government or abolishing banks out of spite. It was not an exercise in anarchy. Rather, it was about building a decentralized crypto ecosystem that could serve as the future of finance. This system would rely on mathematical trust instead of institutional trust.
The goal was to create a parallel financial infrastructure that was more efficient, transparent, and accessible than the legacy system. We wanted to build a better mousetrap, not burn down the house. Many people misunderstood this distinction. They thought decentralization meant eliminating all oversight. My view was that we needed a system that could operate alongside traditional finance while offering superior technology. We needed rails that allowed value to move as freely as information moves on the internet. This vision required true decentralization at the protocol level. It required that no single entity could halt transactions or seize funds without consensus.
As the years progressed and I moved from observing the space to actively investing in it, a disturbing pattern emerged. The promise was beginning to fray. I began to realize that Web3, in its current iteration, is not truly decentralized. In fact, much of it is a sophisticated mirage. My realization did not come from reading whitepapers or listening to keynote speeches. It came from the trenches of due diligence. When you invest capital in a project, you gain a level of visibility that the average retail user never sees. You get to look under the hood. What I found was that most projects were merely pretending to be decentralized.
They used the aesthetics of Web3, including tokens, DAOs, and governance portals. The control structures remained stubbornly Web2. I saw smart contracts with admin keys held by a single founder. I saw treasury funds controlled by multisig wallets, with all signers being employees of the same venture capital firm. I saw community governance where the voting power was so concentrated among early insiders that the average token holder’s vote was mathematically irrelevant. This was decentralization theater. It was a performance designed to attract liquidity and hype without ceding actual power.
The infrastructure was built on public blockchains, yes. The switches that controlled the flow of value were held in private hands. This centralization creates single points of failure. It invites regulatory crackdowns because there is always a human to subpoena. It defeats the purpose of censorship resistance. If a small group of humans can pause the contract, blacklist an address, or change the tokenomics overnight, the system is not trustless. It is simply a digital bank with a worse user interface and higher volatility. This defeats the technology’s original purpose. We built these systems to remove intermediaries, not to create new ones with better marketing.
As I analyzed why this centralization persisted, I identified the root cause. It was not just greed or malice. It was a structural limitation. The human element is stopping how we can grow in this DeFi space. Humans are the bottleneck. In the current DeFi model, humans are required to make almost every critical decision. Humans set the interest rates. Humans decide which collateral is acceptable. Humans vote on governance proposals. Humans monitor the protocols for exploits. This reliance on human intervention introduces latency, emotion, and corruption into a system that was designed to be objective.
Human governance is slow. By the time a DAO votes on a parameter change to mitigate a risk, the market has often already moved. Human decision-making is emotional. Panic selling or FOMO-driven investment strategies destabilize protocols. Furthermore, human governance is susceptible to social engineering and bribery. We have seen countless instances of whales accumulating governance tokens to push through proposals that drain treasuries. As long as humans are the brain of the operation, the system will remain centralized. Humans naturally congregate power. We form committees, we elect leaders, and we create hierarchies. This is antithetical to the concept of a decentralized web.
To achieve the vision, we must remove the human from the decision-making loop, not just the settlement layer. We need a system that thinks faster than a human, acts more objectively than a human, and cannot be bribed. This realization led me to a new conclusion. The evolution of the internet and finance cannot stop at Web3. Web3 provided the ledger, but it lacks the intelligence to manage it autonomously. This is why I term the next phase Web4.
The definition of Web4 is distinct. If Web3 is the decentralized web of ownership, Web4 is the decentralized web of intelligence. In this paradigm, Artificial Intelligence serves as the brain, and the Blockchain serves as the verifier. This symbiosis solves the centralization dilemma. AI agents, unlike humans, can monitor markets 24/7 without fatigue. They can adjust liquidity pools, rebalance collateral, and execute trades in milliseconds based on complex datasets that no human could process in real time. An AI-driven DeFi protocol could autonomously optimize yield strategies. It would react to on-chain data and off-chain oracle inputs instantly. This removes the emotional and slow nature of human management.
AI alone presents its own risks. An AI is a black box. If an AI makes a decision that drains a fund, how do we know it was not malicious? How do we trust the code running the mind? This is where the blockchain becomes critical. In Web4, the blockchain does not necessarily execute the complex logic. That is too expensive and slow for current chains. Instead, the blockchain verifies the outcome. The AI operates off-chain or on layer-two solutions to perform heavy computation. It then submits proof of its actions to the main blockchain. The smart contract verifies that the AI’s actions comply with the protocol’s pre-agreed rules before settling the transaction. The blockchain acts as the immutable truth layer. It ensures that the AI, the brain, did not hallucinate or deviate from its mandate.
This architecture allows for true re-decentralization. We no longer need a human council to vote on every parameter change. The AI adjusts parameters based on algorithmic stability targets, and the blockchain records the change immutably. We no longer need a centralized risk committee to approve collateral. The AI assesses the risk profile of assets in real-time, and the blockchain secures the custody. This is not about creating a rogue AI that controls the world money. It is about creating autonomous economic agents that operate within the strict, trustless confines of cryptographic verification. The rules are coded on-chain. The execution is handled by AI.
When I started talking about re-decentralization, I envisioned a future where finance was open and permissionless. We are closer than ever, but we hit a wall. That wall was human nature. We tried to build decentralized systems, then handed the keys to centralized groups. It was a contradiction that could not hold. Web4 resolves this contradiction. By delegating cognitive load to AI and trust load to the blockchain, we create a truly autonomous system. It is a system that does not sleep, does not feel fear, and cannot be coerced. It fulfills the original promise of the crypto movement. The aim was not to destroy the existing financial order. The aim was to build a superior one that renders the old inefficiencies obsolete.
The journey from 2019 to today has been one of disillusionment, but also of clarity. We stripped away the hype and found the structural flaws. Now, we have the blueprint to fix them. The future of finance is not just decentralized. It is intelligent. It is Web4. This shift represents the industry’s maturation. We are moving from speculative assets to functional utility. We are moving from human error to algorithmic precision. The banks and governments will remain, but their role will change. They will interact with these new protocols rather than control them. The interoperability between legacy finance and Web4 will define the next decade.
We must remain vigilant against centralization creep. Every time a project introduces a human admin key, it introduces risk. Every time a governance vote is dominated by insiders, it reduces security. The path forward requires strict adherence to code-based law. It requires us to trust math over men. It requires us to trust verification over reputation. This is the only way to build a system that lasts. The technology is ready. The AI models are capable. The blockchains are secure. The only missing piece was the integration of these two powerful forces. Web4 brings them together.
Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.
Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.
An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.