AI and Web3 need equal rules, not special gates

The right test for AI and Web3 regulation is whether the same rule applies to everyone, not who gets protected.

AI and Web3 should be governed by rules that are hard, auditable, and одинаково applied, or they will become a new shelter for incumbents dressed up as innovation.

Equal rules are the only credible form of protection

The clearest point from DEAI 2026 was not that regulation is bad, but that regulation only deserves trust when it is symmetrical. Amanda Chen’s test is simple: if a rule says governance must be transparent and auditable, then a bank and a startup both live under the same burden. That is a real market safeguard because the standard is universal, even if compliance is expensive.

That distinction matters because digital finance already runs on invisible custody. When wealth is reduced to account balances, wallet keys, and smart contract permissions, users cannot judge safety by looking at vaults or branch networks. They judge it by whether the system enforces the same obligations on every participant. A rule that is strict for everyone is a market rule. A rule that is strict only for newcomers is a moat.

Permissionless systems fail the moment they reserve power for a few

The most revealing examples are the ones that sound neutral but are not. “Only regulated banks can run nodes” is not a security standard, it is an eligibility filter. No startup can cross that threshold by working harder, because the rule presupposes the answer before the game begins. The same is true when regulators give real-time interfaces to large institutions but not to smaller firms, or when only a handful of players can freeze transactions through backdoor access.

This is why the Web3 debate cannot be reduced to a simple decentralization slogan. Permissionless innovation is not a decorative ideal. It is the design principle that stops the infrastructure from hard-coding privilege into the protocol layer. Once a rule decides in advance who may participate, the system stops being open and starts becoming permissioned finance with a blockchain logo.

Institutionalization is not betrayal, but it must not erase openness

The strongest defense of today’s convergence is practical. Daniel Yang’s point from QCP is persuasive: as money scales, bad actors scale too, and the public will demand the same security they expect from TradFi. FTX, exchange failures, and state-linked abuse made one thing obvious. Markets do not survive on ideology alone. They survive when controls are real, costs are manageable, and users believe their assets are protected.

Visa’s role reinforces the same logic. A card that can spend stablecoins wherever Visa is accepted is not a surrender to the old order. It is proof that infrastructure can connect systems without forcing users to choose between utility and trust. The problem is not institutional participation. The problem is when institutions use “safety” as a pretext to lock out everyone else. That is not maturity. That is capture.

The counter-argument

The best objection is serious: AI agents and on-chain finance create risks that open systems are not yet ready to handle. If autonomous software can move funds, sign transactions, and coordinate across protocols, then weak controls become systemic risk. In that world, KYC, whitelisting, and restricted access look less like favoritism and more like the minimum price of keeping the market alive.

There is also a real operational argument for concentration. Compliance is expensive, legal liability is messy, and institutions already know how to manage custody, reporting, and recovery. If the public wants digital assets to feel safe at scale, then letting only highly regulated players handle certain functions can appear like the cleanest path.

That argument fails at the point where safety becomes a permanent excuse for unequal participation. I accept the need for strict controls in high-risk functions. I reject the claim that those controls must be designed so only incumbents can satisfy them. If the standard is genuine, a small firm should be able to meet it by investing in the same capabilities. If the standard is really a bank-only gate, then it is regulation as market fencing, not regulation as protection.

What to do with this

Engineers should design for auditable equality: build systems where compliance, access, and control are enforced by transparent rules, not private exceptions. PMs should ask every policy question in one frame: does this requirement raise the bar for everyone, or does it reserve the field for incumbents? Founders should stop selling “decentralization” as a slogan and start proving that their architecture can support both open participation and serious controls without hidden privileges. In AI and Web3, trust is not a brand asset. It is the product of rules that do not change depending on who is asking.