Six years after Parts 1 and 2: Handshake retreats while ENS consolidates, IPFS became plumbing, Helium signs carrier roaming deals, and Bittensor runs 80+ AI subnets. The decentralized internet arrived — as a layer.
Part 2 of the sovereign-money series: Stripe ACP, Mastercard Agent Pay, Visa TAP/Intelligent Commerce, Google AP2, x402 — how private rails already run agentic spend at card-network scale while CBDCs remain pilots.
In 2026, crypto cities consolidate around capital and AI: Praxis raises $525M for an internet-native nation, Blockchains Nevada dies of thirst, and generative models enter the planning room.
Identity is dissolving into masks, keys, and proofs: AI VTubers top Twitch, agents get on-chain names and wallets, and proof-of-personhood turns scarce. Time to plant identity as a flag.
Talos Linux is immutable Kubernetes bare metal without SSH, shell, or package manager—API-only nodes for a sovereign lab running local LLMs and RAG under flag theory.