[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] a16z Crypto, the crypto arm of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), has stressed the need for blockchain in the era of artificial intelligence (AI). It said AI is generating text, voice and video content at ultra-low cost and carrying out interactions that mimic people at scale, threatening online trust systems.

The existing internet was built on the premise that one account equals one user, but AI can easily break that framework. a16z called the situation a "collapse of trust in the digital world" and said blockchain is needed to prevent it.

The core is proof-of-personhood, a decentralised identity authentication system. It is designed to let users store their identity autonomously on a blockchain and use it across multiple platforms. By raising the cost of tampering with individual identities, it said, AI-based fake identities become less economical to create in large numbers.

a16z also said layer2 solutions and smart contracts can automate machine-level micropayments and revenue distribution and create a trustworthy transaction structure within the blockchain economy. It stressed that zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) are a way to secure both protection of identity information and verifiability.

a16z said, "In an era when AI-made and human-made content is mixed, trustworthy identity infrastructure is essential," and "the convergence of AI and blockchain will become the foundation of the next era of the internet."