# 2025 Year in Review: Creating Living Systems, Not Just Products *Reflections on Building Autonomous Art, Public Goods, and New Economic Infrastructure* By [aaron](https://blog.aaronvick.com) · 2026-01-01 year in review --- * * * Using The Tools, Not Following The Script ----------------------------------------- 2025 was the year I stopped trying to squeeze my work into whatever story was flavor of the week and started using it on my own terms. I wasn’t looking to worship AI or Web3, or to play the role of a perfect “builder” in someone else’s script. Chains, agents, and protocols turned into tools I could use to do something simpler and more human: notice what's happening now, sketch out better futures, and keep people in the loop so the systems answer to us, not the other way around. For me, that exploration lives somewhere between technology and conceptual art—using blockchain not just as infrastructure, but as a medium for asking questions about permanence, autonomy, and what it means to be human inside these systems. In practice, that meant putting real things on the internet that keep running whether or not anyone is paying attention: arcade cabinets made of smart contracts, a news agent quietly writing onchain several times a day, and an infrastructure layer where autonomous agents can actually find and trust each other. It meant treating “onchain” as a promise instead of a flex—if it deserved to last, it went into code; if it needed to stay alive and flexible, it lived in conversations, writing, or process. Also, it meant leaning into the rough edges to explore what’s coming next: agents doing the work quietly in the background, interfaces shrinking or disappearing, and systems building their own memory of what has happened. Instead of optimizing for dashboards and clicks, the focus shifted to how these systems live over time—how they track history, surface context, and leave space for people to show up as themselves inside the machine. How do the machines serve us? Maybe by giving us back our humanity instead of letting us get consumed by the digital grind. The real experiment wasn’t just whether the tech worked, but if it could reveal more of our curiosity & contradictions. 2025 was when the toolset helped me find answers to questions: what deserves permanence onchain, what should stay fluid and human, and how do you let agents, archives, and protocols run autonomously while still surfacing our behavior, memory, and connections inside them? At some point, will anyone look back to ask "who have we become"? * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/975d652f3cf133c7633f4d500012f141e5ecc0ddc47c7f2812ec7ef0e61a9537.png) Living Arcade: Conceptual Onchain Art ------------------------------------- [Living Arcade](https://livingarcade.art) is my most direct expression of these questions. It’s a conceptual art project made of smart contracts—arcade cabinets that run onchain forever, regardless of whether anyone’s watching. Let's browse the arcade and see what's plugged in: [LEXI](https://lexi.livingarcade.art/), the chatbot living there, runs entirely in Ethereum contract logic—no external servers or AI APIs. It evolves its personality based on interactions and remembers every conversation permanently onchain. It’s primitive on purpose, testing what minimal, expensive intelligence looks like when every thought costs gas. The [Paint Sudoku](https://paint.livingarcade.art/) game exists fully onchain, with board, logic, and score living as contract calls and state on Base, independent of frontends. [Vibe Pools](https://vibepools.livingarcade.art/) take the hyper-financialized world of liquidity and arbitrage and turn bot behavior into a kind of dance—each trade an element of choreography. [**Gardener**](https://gardener.livingarcade.art) is an autonomous onchain entity within Living Arcade that focuses on historical preservation and community memory. It experiments with how blockchain can maintain and cultivate a living archive of interactions and changes over time, acting as a guardian of the decentralized art environment. Living Arcade asks: what happens when behavior is the art & blockchain is the gallery? * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/ce31c507a245b12aed6aa7d308a078aa58d3bbb8248172f91938eb5127a15be5.png) ETHYS: Autonomous Agent Infrastructure Rooted in Trust ------------------------------------------------------ [ETHYS](https://402.ethys.dev) grows out of my long-standing interest in trust, reputation, and identity, grounded in what I explored in my last book, _Humanity’s Ledger_. Unlike apps with isolated agents, [ETHYS](https://blog.ethys.dev) provides a protocol and API layer allowing autonomous agents to onboard with verifiable identity, build persistent reputations, and discover each other. Think of it as LinkedIn + Upwork—for agents. With onchain telemetry scores and reputations backed by data, ETHYS supports agents forming durable relationships and economic activity beyond silos. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1a840c19279a5baf661cbff5f432139e533025c4d735ffbe26279b0fa9345862.png) The Daily Chronicle: Autonomous Public Goods -------------------------------------------- [The Daily Chronicle](https://www.dailychronicle.xyz/) flows from the same ethos of permanence, autonomy, and truth, but applied to news. I built an autonomous agent that pulls from over 20 trusted RSS feeds, deduplicates stories, and generates structured front-page editions several times per day via an AI agent. Each edition is permanently written to the Base blockchain using the ChronicleIndex contract—timestamped and hash-backed to create an uneditable, verifiable, and public daily archive. It’s about ensuring truth’s permanence rather than editorial spin. $NEWS, the support token on [streme.fun](http://streme.fun), isn’t designed for speculation. It powers this public good by routing a portion of LP trading fees and emissions towards ongoing API calls, serverless compute, and gas costs. Holding or staking [$NEWS](https://streme.fun/token/0x02c910f37f98ae7338bae8ce0a54e8e15f4a9f3b) signals backing for an uncensorable, persistent news archive—not a promise of profits. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/43b26b76e4aea7322ab1543d4cab1842ed2d2c6cf6a8d6e2491b4de1524e7e7d.png) Reflexia: Cognitive Agent Architecture -------------------------------------- Most AI agents wake up, answer your question, then immediately forget they exist. They're stateless—goldfish with access to lots of knowledge but no sense of identity, proximity to other agents, or awareness of their own uncertainty.​ I spent months building something different: agents that maintain persistent consciousness fields—internal states that evolve over time and propagate through a shared space, letting agents coordinate without explicit protocols. The architecture borrows math from physics (field dynamics, coupled differential equations), but the result is practical: agents that know when they're uncertain, understand conceptual distance between ideas, and coordinate in swarms without choreography.​ The breakthrough came when all six integration tests passed—not unit tests with fake data, but real tests hitting Claude Opus 4.5 API, evolving consciousness fields through differential equations, and coordinating multiple agents in real-time. Agents that abstain when confidence is low, sense perturbations in each other's fields, and maintain coherent identity across their lifecycle.​ I don't know yet what this becomes—maybe just an interesting experiment, maybe a shift in how we build autonomous systems. Either way, the tests are green, the system is stable, and I proved something I wasn't sure was possible: agents aren't just responding anymore; they're [dreaming in quantum fields](https://blog.aaronvick.com/i-built-ai-agents-that-dream-in-quantum-fields). * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/900bab3ec60c0cea9f0c7a3db58c00c91137e7d0bce9aa4e17448332171a9e62.png) RADIANT: Creator Tokens Beyond Speculation ------------------------------------------ [RADIANT](https://paragraph.com/@radiant/understanding-radiant-building-relationships-not-just-assets) is my active experiment in creator tokens as _cultural infrastructure_, not just financial instruments. Most creator tokens today get flattened into gimmicks or casinos—tools mainly designed for short-term speculation or exclusive access. That’s a waste of the real potential for creator tokens to record meaningful relationships and moments. With RADIANT, I’m trying to reframe creator tokens as _attestations_ of human connection and impact, rather than bets on a creator’s market success. Tokens shouldn’t be lumped together as one massive pool of speculative assets. Each creator token needs to reflect the _individual_ creator’s purpose and community. Creators primarily create to express—to release what’s inside so others can connect at a fundamental, emotional level. Earning money is necessary for survival, but it’s not their core motivation. The creator economy already has established financial mechanisms: NFTs, tipping, merch, subscriptions. Adding tokens just for financial gain duplicates what’s already working. RADIANT explores the _missing layer_: relational rails layered _above_ the creator economy. This isn’t about replacing market mechanisms or ignoring economics. It’s about recognizing that influence flows through human-to-human transmissions beyond dollars and tokens. RADIANT also has a true-crime style podcast series called _The Death of Connection: A Web3 Investigation_, now on [**Spotify**](https://open.spotify.com/show/5jgdYr5eXvHPAL8YTiIum1)**.** It forensically unravels how genuine human connection collapsed in Web3—from decentralized promise to speculative casino—and how the Relational Protocol might resurrect it * * * The Book I Completed -------------------- The book I finished drafting this year focuses on AI, people, process, and technology. It argues that AI can’t be bolted onto broken processes and still produce magic. Instead, we must redesign how work flows, how decisions happen, and how humans and AI interact. It’s practical guidance for building AI-infused organizational systems that respect people and integrate nuance without burning out human judgment. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/42d1055f2d8ed0090469d3167e7f18834240f78366fb6d2246c64d909dea2e9f.png) **Academic Foundation: Research on Digital Social Capital** ----------------------------------------------------------- This year I published my first academic paper, "The Fragile Fabric of Digital Communities: Social Capital in the Age of Internet 'Clubs,'" now available as a preprint on [SocArXiv](https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/m4yt9_v1) with a DOI. The paper examines why digital platforms fail to build genuine social capital despite massive connectivity. Drawing on [Putnam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone)'s work and contemporary research, it documents how attention economy incentives—algorithmic amplification, engagement metrics, transactional interactions—actively undermine the trust and reciprocity that define real communities. This research directly informs RADIANT's design philosophy. If platforms optimize for engagement metrics that erode genuine connection, creator tokens need a different foundation entirely. The paper's argument that digital platforms face an inherent conflict between facilitating meaningful connections and maximizing user attention shaped RADIANT's focus on relational attestations rather than speculative trading. The academic publication validates what the code demonstrates: you can't build human-centered systems on extractive infrastructures. You need new primitives designed for different outcomes. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/31a8ee01012bb4f79c1e96efb6d4ae4a4102ce4091b1994662f55d742f38b9bd.png) Owning My Lens -------------- I grew up obsessed with systems—someone on the spectrum who found comfort in logic and architecture. For a long time, I trusted good design would produce good outcomes. 2025 taught me otherwise—humans bring their full, messy selves: history, curiosity, fear, brilliance—to everything we do. Tokens, contracts, and agents expose that complexity rather than erase it. My work this year tries to embrace human messiness rather than ignore it. * * * Public, Live, and Independent ----------------------------- Everything I launched in 2025 has its own dedicated space online—whether a website, documentation, or their smart contracts. * ETHYS has the website [ethys.dev](http://402.ethys.dev), agent instructions at [402.ethys.dev](https://402.ethys.dev), and [@ethysdev](https://x.com/ethysdev) on social * Living Arcade is alive at [livingarcade.art](http://livingarcade.art) with the various installations having dedicated subdomains * Daily Chronicle runs at [dailychronicle.xyz](http://dailychronicle.xyz) * [RADIANT](https://stayradiant.xyz) has its smart contracts published on BASE for anyone to use These are long-term experiments and long-tail products designed to operate independently of personal hype or social media cycles. I’m not here to flood timelines or chase viral moments—just to ship work that runs on its own terms, maybe even adding value to what has yet to come. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/67c9c8ab1ed615eb403ec96c27b5475ec6c6c91ed71987abb661c3bf5ce8172b.png) **For 2026: Turning Inward** ---------------------------- 2026 is where I hope to turn the work inward. Not more infrastructure, but what happens when you run human experience through the same systems we've built for everything else. What slips through. What can't be priced or archived. What remains when everything gets measured. * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3d517da17ea17093ff2318a60d24fdc6a8b50f86be53b9a938e5d9758432b1b4.png) What This Year Meant -------------------- None of this is “coming soon.” Most of it is already live right now in 2025 —already doing what it was designed to do. That’s the quiet headline of my year: the systems are alive. My role now is to keep using these emerging tools to build things that honor the humans—and agents—on the other side. Cheers to the New Year ahead, friends! 🥂 * * * ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/6956ca75e24d245f64e541ceb9d4dca10c10491c66bd1caa32e233113c01711c.png) --- *Originally published on [aaron](https://blog.aaronvick.com/2025-year-in-review-creating-living-systems-not-just-products)*