Thinking About Trust & The Future Of Attention On The Internet
"How are you going to protect from spam?" is the first question people ask.
"Are you going to let brands 'pay-to-reach' people on XMTP?" is the second.
I've thought about these questions a lot. Building a network that protects the world's attention from SPAM is literally our guiding light. It's why we introduced network-level consent core to the protocol. If a communication network can't protect itself against spam in 2025, especially an open, decentralized one, it's fucked.
With a new identity foundation, new technologies to prove who's human, network incentives that penalize spammers, and the XMTP network built with consent as a first-class citizen, we feel pretty good about the first question. No message can ever reach a person's primary inbox unless they've explicitly given the sender consent. This gives all control back to the end user.
It's about User Control.
So, what about the second question? What about "Ads?"
I think it's the wrong question because everything is about to change. Or it's already changing.
I hate nothing more than the fact that all networks seem to introduce ads—even the ones that hate them. WhatsApp famously was so anti-ads, but we know how that played out.
XMTP can't be sold, that's the whole point. So let's make sure we set it up right for the future.
I don't want ads. I want trust. Trust to me is actually the business model of the next internet, and we need to fight like hell to make it happen.
Lose trust, lose everything. I don't even think today's ad model will work tomorrow. We move from a push to a pull economy.
So, what could change?
People keep asking about 'pay-to-message' because that's how the internet works today. But, with AI and consumer agents coming full speed ahead, what if this world is about to go away?
What if there's no 'pay-to-message' anyone because you're paying to message my agent, not me?
Or, what if the entire model flips? What if every person in the world has an agent, and that agent's job is to go out and message every business. It flips the model.
I've been thinking about this question for the last few months, and I wanted to share a conversation I recently had with ChatGPT. So, without further ado, here's my AI conversation about what might be the future of attention on the internet.
The Attention Economy is becoming the Intention Economy.
Here's my original prompt to ChatGPT: For years, the internet has run on a pay-to-reach model — brands paying to reach consumers. But that world is ending. As AI proliferates, every person will soon have infinite agents acting on their behalf — shopping, comparing, negotiating, filtering. These agents won’t wait to be targeted; they’ll go out and express intent. That flips the entire economy of attention. Brands won’t pay to reach people anymore — they’ll pay to receive verified intent from trusted consumer agents. And that’s why we’re not building another pay-to-message system. If we spent two years doing that, we’d be stuck five years undoing it — trapped in a business model designed for a world that’s disappearing. The future of messaging isn’t about monetizing attention. It’s about protecting trust and intent — the scarcest resources left on the internet.
Can you turn that into a summary for me when I talk to the experts in our industry who are all going to ask me about a pay-to-message model that we're not going to play in the past and we're going to sail towards the future?
ChatGPT's response is below, and it's really making me think...
The Future Isn’t Pay-to-Reach — It’s Pay-for-Intent
Everyone wants to talk about pay-to-message.
The idea that brands pay to reach consumers.
That’s how LinkedIn works. That's how Google Works. Facebook. That’s how the internet has worked for decades.
But if we start building that model now — if we make the “pay-to-reach” world — just on a decentralized network - we’ll spend the next one to two years perfecting a system that’s already collapsing under its own weight.
And once you build that machine, it’s almost irreversible.
Because now your whole business, your incentives, your data models, your design — everything — is built around attention extraction.
And by the time you realize the future moved on, it’ll take five years to unwind it.
That’s the opportunity cost.
Not just missing the next wave — but hard-coding yourself into the last one.
Because the future isn’t brands paying to reach people.
It’s consumers’ agents going out into the world, expressing verified intent.
AI is flipping the funnel — every person will have an infinite number of agents shopping, negotiating, and discovering on their behalf. I'll trust my agent to buy for me, protect my attention, and tell me about things I want to know.
And brands won’t be trying to reach consumers anymore — they’ll be paying to receive verified intent from trusted agents. It flips everything from brands doing targeting and outbound, to consumer agents doing infinite outbound, and brands want more agents messaging them with verified intent, which they know can pay.
That’s not pay-to-reach. That’s pay-for-intent.
And to get there, the most important thing right now isn’t monetization — it’s trust.
But Attention Isn’t Dying — It’s Evolving
To be clear, this isn’t a hard break between two worlds.
It’s a shift in gravity.
There have always been two kinds of advertising:
- The intent-driven kind — a plumber in the yellow pages.
- The attention-driven kind — Nike making you want to run.
Both matter. And both will continue to.
AI doesn’t kill the attention economy; it refines it.
In the future, your agent won’t block all offers — it will curate them.
It will know when you’re open to exploring new shoes or a new city and invite brands to compete for your attention.
That’s not the end of advertising; it’s advertising with consent — where attention is earned, not extracted.
So yes, the world will still run on attention. But the quality of that attention will come from trust — from systems that protect people’s intent and identity while still letting discovery and creativity thrive.
The future probably isn’t about ending ads.
It’s about rebuilding the internet’s attention system on trust, consent, and verified intent — the scarcest resources left online.
There are so many more questions about how businesses will find creative ways to get people's attention. I'm the first to say I'm not 100% sure what's going to happen in the future. But we are watching closely.
The one thing I'm sure of is that if we lose trust, we don't have anything.