Nvidia started 2026 with a $65 billion fourth-quarter revenue forecast — a signal that was quietly reshaping the AI conversation.
—
As the backbone of the global AI infrastructure, Nvidia indicates that demand for AI is accelerating, not leveling off. Productivity is growing faster than expected and the long-running “AI bubble” narrative is starting to fade.
AI doesn’t slow down. It becomes more autonomous, more operational and more deeply embedded in the real economy.
As these systems get bigger, something else becomes unavoidable: they need rails. Crypto and blockchain increasingly provide that infrastructure: fast settlement, programmable value, verifiable execution and always-available coordination.
As AI becomes more active, crypto will scale with it, positioning agentic AI as a key driver of AI’s next phase of economic growth.
To understand where this shift is headed in 2026, Blockster spoke with Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust and Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation, whose work sits at the intersection of AI, digital identity and decentralized infrastructure.
AI agents will act on our behalf in 2026
Mayfield sees 2026 as the turning point where AI goes from assistance to authority. Rather than simply supporting human decisions, agentic systems will increasingly rely on acting on behalf of users within predefined permissions and restrictions.
As he explains:
“By 2026, I expect a major shift where Agentic AI will be given delegated authority to make active decisions on behalf of individuals,” a transition that he says will ultimately “outpace current human-based interactions in terms of security and resilience to fraud.”
Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust & Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation
This represents a fundamental change in the way people interact with software. Instead of manually approving each action, users define intent, permissions, and limits once – and autonomous agents continuously operate within those boundaries. Execution speeds up, friction decreases, and systems scale without constant human oversight.
But delegation at this level requires more than just smarter models. It requires verifiable execution, identity, and trust frameworks that function independently of centralized intermediaries. This is where decentralized identity and onchain authentication moves from optional tooling to core infrastructure.
Governments will lead digital identity – not big tech
As major technology platforms continue to debate standards and interoperability, Mayfield expects governments to take the first step. He predicts that “government departments will be the first large-scale adopters of decentralized identity technology (DID) through national ID systems.”
These systems will not remain in silos. Over time, national identity frameworks are expected to integrate with corporate identity systems and extend to supply chain infrastructure, including digital product passports. As Mayfield notes:
“It is expected that these government systems will then integrate with Corporate ID systems, and ultimately be deployed within supply chain infrastructures such as the Digital Product Passport (DPP).”
Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust & Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation
This turns a long-standing Web3 assumption on its head. Instead of startups pushing decentralized identity up the institutions, national infrastructure will push identity frameworks downstream into corporations, logistics and global trade – driven by compliance rather than experimentation.
Once that happens, companies will no longer adopt a decentralized identity because it is innovative. They will adopt it because they have no choice.
EU rules will force a reset of corporate identity
That regulatory burden is already emerging. The coming EU supply chain and data regulations are expected to lead to widespread demand from companies for verifiable identity and data attribution.
Mayfield sees 2026 as the year these requirements move from planning to enforcement, noting that “new EU regulations will drive significant demand for verifiable data, pushing companies to adopt verifiable identity and data technologies.”
Authentication within isolated systems will not be sufficient. To function in real-world supply chains, providers will need to support secure attribution across multiple domains, enabling identity and data authentication across fragmented ecosystems and networks.
The challenge is not technical feasibility. It’s balance. As Mayfield puts it:
“A key challenge for these providers will be balancing the need for interoperability and ease of use with critical privacy issues, self-sovereign controls and future-proof security.”
Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust & Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation
This is where many older systems fall apart. They were never designed for selective disclosure, cryptographic proof, or cross-domain verification.
Decentralized identity frameworks were.
Digital product passports without supervision
Privacy remains one of the most misunderstood aspects of this transition.
Digital product passports are often seen as potential surveillance tools, but Mayfield is clear that this outcome is not inevitable. In his view:
“A self-sovereign approach is key to digital product passports, allowing all parties in a value chain to selectively release data.”
Thomas Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust & Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation
That selectivity depends on architectural separation. Rather than centralizing sensitive information, effective DPP systems rely on “a mix of off-chain and on-chain data repositories,” where private data remains secure off-chain and only verifiable evidence is anchored on-chain.
Preventing abuse is just as important as enabling access. Mayfield emphasizes that “essential to preventing surveillance and protecting personally identifiable information is the use of open protocols that prioritize security and privacy.” Regulation still plays a role as a backstop, especially to prevent verified data from being correlated, enriched and resold by intermediaries.
The goal is not total visibility. It’s selective evidence.
Systems must be able to verify everything that matters, without revealing what doesn’t matter. That balance – transparency without oversight – can only be achieved through cryptography, decentralized identity and programmable access controls.
Why this matters now
As AI systems gain delegated authority, trust becomes an infrastructure. Autonomous agents can only operate at scale if identity, execution, and accountability are verifiable by default.
This is the shift Mayfield points to: AI is shifting from tools we use to agents we authorize.
And crypto makes that transition possible.
AI creates the demand for autonomy.
Cryptography provides verifiable trust.
Decentralized identity enables coordination without centralized control.
If 2025 is going to prove that agentic systems could function, 2026 will be the year they are expected to act.