In the future, users will earn tokens by completing tasks in decentralised networks rather than purchasing them. This industry development was forecasted by Shayon Sengupta, an investment partner at venture fund Multicoin Capital.
1/ A billion people will get their first public key by earning crypto, not buying it. The next era of onramping is going to be powered by Internet Labor Markets.
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— shayon (@shayonsengupta) March 10, 2026
The expert referred to this new direction as “Internet Labor Markets” (ILM). In such networks, users receive assets for specific contributions: work, resources, or expertise.
“In the future, people will receive their first cryptocurrency not because they bought it, but because they earned it,” he noted.
Among the key characteristics of ILM, Sengupta highlighted:
- dynamic task creation: parameters (specification, verification, and reward) are programmatically set for specific requests without unnecessary formalities;
- strict verification guarantees: use of automated (deterministic) verification or staking mechanisms in cases where human assessment is required.
From Speculation to Earning
The ILM concept is gaining popularity, especially in the Solana ecosystem. There, more projects are emerging with rewards for completing verifiable tasks.
“There are only two ways to enter crypto: buy or earn. The first path has been followed for the last ten years. In the next decade, most will take the second. This wave will overshadow the first in terms of participants and volume because the overwhelming majority of people in the world live on income, not asset purchases,” Sengupta believes.
He explained that blockchain infrastructure makes such systems possible through automatic verification and settlements. Traditional hiring involves bureaucracy and payment delays. ILM replaces this process with deterministic verification: work is confirmed, and payment is instantly made via a distributed ledger.
“Imagine: someone creates a company for a specific market need, and 50,000 people worldwide get paid for their work,” said the expert.
Digital Labour Coordination
In practice, such work can take various forms: from providing channel bandwidth and data annotation for AI to managing energy consumption.
The concept develops ideas from DePIN. Sengupta called this direction “the best example of on-chain coordination” — it laid the foundation for ILM, providing:
- fast and cheap settlements;
- verifiable results;
- reliable guarantees of trust and reputation for resource providers.
In recent years, DePIN networks have significantly evolved:
- they have improved incentive system design, moving away from poorly conceived inflationary issuance;
- they have learned to verify work more strictly (through zkTLS), combat spam, and pay proportionally to contributions;
- they have helped normalise earnings in tokens;
- they have found the ideal task volume: the simpler the action, the more efficient the network.
According to Sengupta, the next stage is the transition from passive contribution (“set up an access point and receive tokens indefinitely”) to specific tasks with clear payment: “deliver a package from A to B and receive a fixed reward” or “reduce energy consumption by 100 kW in the evening and receive tokens.”
The Role of AI
The expert is confident that AI will not render human labour obsolete — on the contrary, the technology will enhance individual efficiency and expand the range of solvable tasks. What was once a single profession will become a set of small modular roles.
Future organisations will have a tiny core and a vast periphery of on-demand performers. The main constraint is not hiring but speed: how quickly can the right person be found, the quality of their work verified, and the result paid for? This is where ILM comes in.
The transition of income on-chain naturally stimulates consumption within ecosystems. People will begin to use basic crypto tools more actively: yield services, lending, trading. This will close the loop, uniting labour and capital markets.
“A new user will not come to read a white paper or buy a meme coin. They will come because they can do work here, get paid, and stay — because the pay is better than anywhere else,” concluded Sengupta.
Earlier, River analysts recorded a record growth in Bitcoin adoption by institutional banks, public companies, and governments.