Hey everyone,
I’ve just published a new article that frames SKALE’s role in what I believe is one of the next great technological shifts: The Rise of the Machine Economy.
For a while now, I’ve felt that we’ve been looking at blockchain adoption through the wrong lens. The constant struggle with UX, wallets, and gas isn’t a sign of failure; it’s a sign that these networks were never truly built for direct human interaction. They often feel as though they were built for machines.
My post explores this idea in depth, outlining a future where the primary users of blockchains are autonomous agents and machine-based systems which are transacting millions of times a day.
Here’s the core argument in a nutshell:
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The Core Problem: The machine economy—where AI agents and APIs transact seamlessly—is impossible on most current blockchains. Variable gas fees and slow finality make high-frequency, low-value interactions economically unviable.
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The Necessary Stack: To function, this new economy requires a stack of collaborative technologies like x402 for native internet payments, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) for verifiable actions, and Small Language Models (SLMs) for decentralized intelligence.
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SKALE as the Essential Infrastructure: This is where SKALE transitions from a competitive network of L1s to a fundamental necessity. Its architecture—zero gas fees, instant finality, and a true multi-chain decentralized cloud —is the only environment where a true machine economy can thrive. We already see proof of this with high-throughput applications like Exorde and the top games in the ecosystem. These models simply couldn’t exist elsewhere.
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The Endgame: As the market moves past the “blockchain wars,” the platforms that succeed won’t be the ones that are marginally faster or cheaper, but those that enable entirely new, sustainable business models. For the coming wave of machine-to-machine applications and enterprise use cases (like Toyota’s multi-chain vision, see the article for more on this), SKALE isn’t just a good option; it’s the logical endgame.
This vision positions SKALE not just as a player in today’s market, but as the foundational layer for the autonomous systems of tomorrow.
I would love for this community to read the full piece and discuss it.
You can read the full post here: The Rise of the Machine Economy - TheGreatAxios's Library
What are your thoughts? Do you agree that the future is machine-to-machine? What other technologies are critical for this vision?
Looking forward to the conversation.
Reminder that this is just an idea and specifically my own. I do contract work with SKALE Labs and other projects throughout the ecosystem but my views and the ideas above are my own.