The internet increasingly runs on attention. Content drives discovery, influence, and monetization across nearly every digital sector, from media and advertising to Web3, creator platforms, and AI-generated content ecosystems.
Yet one foundational issue remains largely unresolved.
The internet has no neutral way to verify what actually happens to digital content once it is published. 
Today, claims about views, engagement, reach, attribution, and performance are almost always generated inside closed platforms. These claims are measured, reported, and interpreted by systems that directly benefit from the outcomes they present. While this data may be operationally useful, it is structurally weak as a basis for trust between independent parties.
This is not primarily a measurement problem. It is a trust problem.
Analytics tools and dashboards answer a narrow question: what does this platform say happened, according to its own rules. They do not produce shared, portable facts that can be independently verified, reused across systems, or referenced across contractual, economic, or regulatory contexts.
As a result, much of the digital economy operates on belief rather than verification.
Creators are asked to trust platforms. Brands are asked to trust reporting chains. Agencies are asked to reconcile incompatible metrics. Regulators are asked to rely on disclosures that cannot be independently reconstructed. As content distribution fragments and AI accelerates scale, these weaknesses become harder to ignore.
This fragility is increasingly visible in Web3 and adjacent ecosystems.
Decentralized media, tokenized content, on-chain licensing, AI-generated assets, and cross-platform distribution all increase the importance of answering a simple question: what actually happened to this content, and who can rely on that answer?
Without neutral verification, attribution becomes blurred, disputes become harder to resolve, and value becomes more difficult to justify. The result is greater reliance on centralized intermediaries, not less, even in systems designed to reduce them.
Historically, other parts of the internet solved this problem through infrastructure.
Payments infrastructure made value transfer verifiable without requiring trust between counterparties. Identity infrastructure made authentication reusable across systems. Cloud infrastructure made computation reliable without requiring visibility into its physical execution.
Content and attention, despite underpinning enormous economic activity, still lack an equivalent trust layer.
Until that gap is addressed, debates about creator compensation, platform fairness, transparency, and accountability will continue to focus on symptoms rather than structural causes.
If attention is the currency of the internet, then the absence of infrastructure to verify it represents a foundational flaw — one that becomes more costly as digital ecosystems scale, decentralize, and automate.
About the Author
Ian Scarffe is a capital strategy and fundraising advisor, serial entrepreneur, and investor working across Web3, blockchain, AI, real-world assets, and fintech. He advises founders and executive teams on fundraising structure, investor positioning, and infrastructure-led growth, with a focus on building scalable, institution-ready technology companies.
His work centers on identifying structural gaps in emerging markets and helping teams translate complex technical systems into credible economic and investment narratives. He is actively involved in media, data, and digital infrastructure initiatives and works with startups and scale-ups globally.
Website: www.ianscarffe.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianscarffe
More: https://linktr.ee/ianscarffe
Ian Scarffe - Journalist
Ian Scarffe is a serial entrepreneur, investor, journalist and consultant with business experience from around the world. An expert in Startup, Investment, Fintech, Web3, Web4, AI and Blockchain industries. Ian currently consults and advises for a range of multi-million dollar companies. Ian’s overall mission is to foster a society of economically independent individuals who are engaged citizens, contributing to the improvement of their communities across the world.
