Private data is a powerful asset, even if most Americans don’t realize it. After the 2008 financial crisis, the government mandated that banks allow customers to access their data, but even today, almost two decades later, J.P. Morgan still fights to comply with “open banking.” When corporations hoard private data to create “moats” for user retention, they stifle competition and reduce innovation. Value should not just flow to a handful of corporations but also to the people who actually create it.
The rise of the agentic web – where autonomous AI agents act on behalf of humans – is set to widen the data ownership gap. Today, AI agents crawl the internet, vacuum up content without attribution, and return nothing to users. As we consume apps like ChatGPT and create prompts with deeply personal information, we have become even more prolific creators of valuable private data. That data is the foundation upon which today’s digital and AI economy is built.
To stop this cycle of big companies gobbling up our data for free will require a technological solution and, fortunately, one is on hand. Blockchain can turn users into economic stakeholders in the very digital services they power, and usher in a new era of wealth, participation, and dynamism.
Until recently, blockchains sought to store all your data and execute all your applications —a cumbersome, expensive and slow process. Now, advances in cryptography and design allow builders to offer the privacy and ownership benefits of blockchain but in lighter, easy-to-use packages. These advances can be combined with a feature of blockchain that is sorely missing on the traditional internet: verifiability, or the ability to prove who you are and what you did.
Together, these technologies give the internet a trust layer that shifts power from large centralized organizations back to individuals and makes true ownership in the digital economy possible for the first time.
Convergence is what happens when a solution meets a problem in a way that unlocks value, adoption, or alignment across systems. This is beginning to occur with blockchain-driven verifiability and data ownership issues that arise with the agentic web.
The initial benefactor of these initiatives will be professional online publishers, but soon it will be all of us—the very people creating the data. Projects like OpenLedger are already showing how users can get paid for sharing their data. The CLARITY Act, which is working its way through the Senate, could make it easier for agents to share ownership via tokens.
The stakes for success are high. Without digital ownership, people remain tenants of the digital economy. With ownership, they become stakeholders with a vested interest in seeing it flourish. A verifiable internet lowers barriers for startups, embeds trust into systems from the start, and gives people new ways to participate in value creation. It restores competition, innovation, and fairness — the real pillars of the American Dream.
Ownership defined the last American century. Blockchain can ensure ownership shapes the next one century by giving people true control over their data – and, in turn, affirming that promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the digital world.
Adam Winnick is the founder of Finality Capital Partners, a venture fund focused on digital assets. In 2018, Adam founded the Medici Network to support broad institutional adoption of digital assets.
