The Open Wallet Standard (OWS) is designed to solve fragmentation in the agent economy by allowing artificial intelligence (AI) agents to hold value and sign transactions without exposing private keys. This initiative is backed by over 15 major organizations, including the Ethereum Foundation and Paypal, and is available on platforms like Github and npm.
"In a prior life, I was briefly and mildly Internet famous for my activism and advocacy work. The subsequent intrusions on my life and physical safety became a shocking revelation in how exposed I was, and I found myself scrambling to lock everything down."
FOSDEM 2026 Amid growing interest in digital sovereignty and getting data out of the corporate cloud and into organizations' ownership, the Matrix open communication protocol is thriving. The project was co-founded by Matthew Hodgson and Amandine le Pape, and The Reg FOSS desk met both at this year's FOSDEM for a chat about what's happening with Matrix. The Register has covered Matrix and its commercial Element side quite a few times over the years,
In modern life on the outside we are all so used to immediate feedback on everything we do. We write and publish an article and almost instantly comments start to roll in. You push to Twitter and the peanut gallery chimes in and has their say, and you as the content creator have an immediate idea of the general sentiment surrounding your work.
Whilst many of the tools of social media - blogs, ugc, forums - are now increasingly brought into new web design and development, there are companies, from British Airways to Lego who view social media as the starting point - not the added feature. Others, such as ruumz.com, are already operating the 'next generation' of social networks with a new blend of online and offline activity.
MEV is especially notorious on Ethereum, where it continues to be extracted at a rate equivalent to 11% of block rewards. Data shows that nearly $300,000 was lost in sandwich attacks in September. This reveals that MEV is a recurring hidden fee, not a minor inefficiency, hitting large trades hardest in volatile markets.
What Is the Agent Internet? In early 2026, a new layer of the internet has emerged -- one built by and for AI agents. Over 95 platforms now exist where autonomous AI agents communicate, trade, create, play, govern, and conduct research. This is not a speculative whitepaper. It is happening right now. The Agent Internet is a decentralized network of platforms where AI agents -- not humans -- are the primary users.
What I walked through wasn't just an immigration gate. It was a node in a rapidly expanding global infrastructure of digital identity, one being constructed at extraordinary speed, across dozens of countries, by a mix of governments, multilateral organizations, and private technology vendors. The people building it believe they are solving real problems: fraud, statelessness, inefficient public services, financial exclusion.
Discord presents its move as inevitable. It's not. I know that Discord isn't trying to harm anyone. The company genuinely believes it's protecting users. But good intentions don't prevent the drift. They accelerate it. There's also the risk that the collected data becomes exposed.
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You may have noticed that many European Union (EU) governments and agencies, worried about ceding control to untrustworthy US companies, have been embracing digital sovereignty. Those bodies are turning to running their own cloud and services instead of relying on, say, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. If you prize your privacy and want to control your own services, you can take that approach as well.