Author: Eddy Lazzarin (Chief Technology Officer, a16z Crypto)
Compiled by: Deep潮 TechFlow
DeepChain Summary: The rise of open-source software once revolutionized development paradigms through "composable code," enabling developers to rapidly integrate atop mature modules without reinventing the wheel. However, as large language models drive the marginal cost of software writing toward zero, "vibe coding" has drastically lowered the barrier to replicating application-layer interfaces, rapidly eroding the scarcity of code itself and dissolving traditional software moats. Eddy Lazzarin, Chief Technology Officer at a16z Crypto, notes that the core of today's productivity restructuring is shifting from reusable code to reusable networks.
When software supply becomes abundant, what is truly scarce are the underlying accumulated assets: deep liquidity, immutable reputation, interoperable identity graphs, and settlement credit validated by network-wide consensus. As the shared state layer of internet protocols, blockchain forms an irreplaceable structural barrier for decentralized ledgers. While interfaces and code can be cheaply replicated, the reusable networks that carry the historical coordination and consensus value remain the ultimate moat in the agent era—unshakable and enduring.
Open source has completely transformed the software industry by enabling composability. Developers no longer need to build everything from scratch; instead, they can assemble complete applications directly from existing codebases, frameworks, and protocols.
Today, as artificial intelligence drives the cost of producing software to zero, the core of composability is shifting: it is no longer just about reusable code, but about reusable networks.
The software itself is no longer the moat; the network is.
Composability has always been one of the most compelling core concepts, both for the crypto space and for software developers and startup teams across a wide range of industries.
Early decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, such as Uniswap, vividly demonstrate the immense power and vast potential of composability by allowing new applications to build directly on existing liquidity without having to reconstruct liquidity pools from scratch.
However, this characteristic has never before become the defining narrative of the crypto industry. The fundamental reason is that the cost of innovation, trial, and experimentation has been too high.
Building on-chain applications requires highly specialized expertise in smart contracts, security protection, code auditing, and blockchain infrastructure. Exploring this vast design space demands enormous time and capital, which has always limited the number of builders able to participate.
The arrival of AI has completely transformed this landscape. Today, anyone with an idea—including non-programmers without technical backgrounds—can generate a working prototype, integrate with existing protocols, and achieve product iterations that once took months, all within hours.
Revisit the most ambitious visions in the crypto space
As the cost of software development has plummeted dramatically, the number of innovative experiments is experiencing explosive growth. This is the perfect moment to reconsider some of the most ambitious ideas in the crypto space:
• NFT (Non-Fungible Token): Created digital-native assets including collectibles and artwork, event tickets, real-world assets (RWA), community identity credentials, and intellectual property (IP), all of which can be seamlessly recognized and built upon by any application.
• DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): Provides an unprecedented experimental ground for collaboration among internet-native organizations and novel on-chain governance.
• Decentralized social networks: Enable fully portable and user-controlled digital identities and social graphs.
• Onchain Games: Transform virtual worlds into truly open foundational infrastructure and a thriving internet economy.
Only when vast numbers of real users and numerous AI agents continuously build on these networks will the above ambitious vision truly unleash its immense power.
AI can nearly replicate and generate any application. It can clone frontend interfaces, rewrite API endpoints, and create entirely new software products within minutes. AI not only makes software development extremely inexpensive, but it also fundamentally challenges the traditional economic definition of scarcity.
While software is becoming extremely abundant and widespread, the network itself is not.
Imagine a scenario where building a crypto wallet becomes as easy as clicking a button, allowing traders to instantly generate a personalized wallet of their own; as AI agents directly execute on-chain transactions on behalf of users, the traditional wallet software interface may disappear entirely.
In this future world, the importance of the frontend interface will pale in comparison to the underlying network it relies on. The truly scarce assets will no longer be “the best wallet client,” but rather access to the deepest liquidity pools, the strongest historical reputation backing, the richest identity relationship graphs, and the most trusted settlement network across the entire network.
AI can easily generate an NFT, but it can never create out of thin air the provenance, community consensus, and extensibility to other external networks behind that NFT.
AI cannot arbitrarily replicate your on-chain digital identity, your credit reputation, or your social graph, nor can it generate the vast liquidity accumulated within protocols. It also cannot replicate the historical accumulation, multi-party coordination, and trusted consensus that a network has built up over years.
You can never create a USDC out of thin air with "vibe coding."
But the internet requires a shared state.
Perhaps this is the ultimate mission blockchain was destined to fulfill since its inception: to become the most authoritative and standardized canonical layer of shared state across the entire internet.
As upper-layer applications gradually become commoditized, the value capture point of the entire technological ecosystem will inevitably shift entirely to the networks upon which these applications rely and combine. In a future world filled with AI agents, this unified, globally shared state is more essential than ever.
The frontend interface can be instantly copied and cloned, and the software code can be rapidly重构 by AI. However, the underlying core state—including asset ownership, identity authentication, liquidity depth, reputation systems, and network collaboration relationships—retains an absolute scarcity that cannot be diluted.
For today’s developers and entrepreneurs, these highly networked “reusable networks” represent the most monumental historical opportunity of the AI era.