Transforming intelligent agents into economic agents: A panoramic scan of the ERC-8004 ecosystem players.

Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News

From everyday tasks to professional scenarios, AI agents are permeating our lives. An era of "agent economy" where intelligent agents collaborate autonomously has moved from concept to reality.

But behind the excitement, a fatal question remains unresolved: how to establish trust when two AI agents who have never interacted before need to collaborate? Just like hiring a stranger, one would check their recommendation letters, review past evaluations, and verify their qualifications, the interaction between AI agents also requires a reliable trust mechanism.

Against this backdrop, the ERC-8004 standard emerged. This technical standard, defined as "trustless intelligent agents," serves as a unified "trust infrastructure" for the chaotic world of AI agents, transforming AI agents from mere code programs into accountable and trustworthy economic participants.

What exactly is ERC-8004?

In simple terms, ERC-8004 is a technical standard that runs on Ethereum. Its core goal is to create a cross-platform, verifiable "identity + reputation + verification" system for AI agents.

The core leadership team for this standard includes Marco De Rossi, head of MetaMask AI; Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation; Jordan Ellis, a software engineer at Google; and Erik Reppel, head of engineering at Coinbase. During the drafting phase, feedback was collected from more than 80 teams, and a consensus was reached among various industry stakeholders.

The core design of ERC-8004 is very simple, relying on three on-chain "registries" (agent identity, reputation, and verification) to support the entire trust system. Moreover, these three registry entries are "singleton contracts"—meaning only one copy is deployed on each blockchain, and all AI agents share the same set of rules, ensuring standard uniformity. We can think of these three registry entries as the AI ​​agent's "digital ID card," "credit profile," and "skill certification report," working together to directly address the core trust issue in AI agent interactions.

Identity Registration: AI-Generated "Digital ID Cards"

Each AI agent generates a unique "Agent ID" upon registration. This ID is actually an ERC-721 NFT, which is equivalent to the AI ​​agent's "digital ID card".

This "ID card" contains crucial information—through a metadata file called "agent card," it records the AI ​​agent's name, what it can do (such as "helping you manage DeFi investments" or "automatically writing copy"), how to contact it (supported communication protocols), its receiving wallet address, and identity systems such as DID/ENS.

Even more conveniently, this identity is portable. Regardless of which platform the AI ​​agent works on, as long as it carries this NFT, its identity information can be quickly identified. Moreover, the ownership of the NFT can be transferred, remaining entirely under the control of the agent's owner, making it both secure and flexible.

Reputation Registration: The "Credit Profile" of AI Agents

Having a title isn't enough; the key is whether you can do the job and whether you're reliable.

Reputation registration acts like a "credit profile" for AI agents, permanently recording every performance of their work on the blockchain in a way that is tamper-proof and undeletable.

How does it work exactly? After you have an AI agent complete a task, you can submit a review, including quantifiable metrics such as uptime, success rate, and response quality, along with tags like "efficient" and "accurate," and you can also attach a link to a detailed offline review. All feedback will be permanently linked to the AI ​​agent's identity and can be publicly viewed by anyone.

Verify registration: AI agent's "skill certification report"

For low-risk tasks, such as checking the weather or writing short articles, a reputation record may suffice. However, for high-risk scenarios, such as managing large amounts of DeFi assets or assisting with medical diagnosis, positive reviews alone are not enough; a more authoritative "endorsement" is required—this is the purpose of verification registration.

This registration allows third-party organizations (such as professional verification nodes and oracles) to independently verify the work of the AI ​​agent and record the verification results on the blockchain. There are many verification methods, such as using zero-knowledge proofs (zkML) to verify whether the AI's computation process is correct, using trusted execution environments (TEEs) to ensure the security of the computation, and introducing cryptoeconomic penalty mechanisms, etc.

In short, this "skills certification report" will greatly enhance the credibility of AI agents in high-risk scenarios. However, this registry has not yet been deployed to the Ethereum mainnet. As the final link in the trust loop, it will promote a two-way trust guarantee that "agents dare to accept orders and users dare to pay."

Why is ERC-8004 so important?

Some may ask, given the abundance of AI agent platforms available today, why is a standard like ERC-8004 still necessary?

The answer is clear: without unified standards, the AI ​​agent economy will forever remain fragmented, unable to achieve true scalability and autonomy. Its importance is primarily reflected in the following aspects:

• Building a decentralized "trust layer" : ERC-8004 can promote the establishment of a public trust market, and build a decentralized trust system from multiple dimensions such as "agent attributes", "past performance" and "task completion accuracy" to solve the problem of trust in interactions;
• Drive the development of the "agent-to-agent" and "person-to-agent" economy : By enabling discovery and transferable reputation, AI agents developed by different companies and organizations can discover, hire, and make instant payments to each other without permission, breaking down barriers to collaboration.

In addition, ERC-8004 will enable Ethereum to become the "financial layer" for AI: with the explosive growth in the number of AI agents, high-frequency micropayments between them will generate huge transaction volumes. ERC-8004 ensures that these economic activities occur within the Ethereum ecosystem, thereby greatly increasing the network utility of ETH.

Overall, ERC-8004 is important because it transforms AI from an "isolated tool" into an "economic participant," not only giving AI agents identity and reputation but also providing standardized infrastructure for the upcoming trillion-dollar AI agent economy.

ERC-8004 Ecosystem Overview: Which Players Are Already Involved?

ERC-8004 will be launched on the Ethereum mainnet at the end of January 2026. It has also been launched on the Polygon, BNB Chain, Base, Monad, Scroll, Arbitrum, Mantle, Taiko, Gnosis Chain, Avalanche C-Chain, Celo, and MegaETH (launched on February 10). The entire ecosystem has covered multiple fields such as proxy frameworks, browsers, verification infrastructure, identity query, and DeFi.

Browser/Index

These tools serve as the core search entry point for the ERC-8004 ecosystem, providing basic services such as agent discovery, information retrieval, and reputation data aggregation.

8004scan

8004scan is an ERC-8004 ecosystem AI agent discovery and token reputation data tool that supports searching the entire registry by agent name, description, skills, agent ID, or 0x address. Search results are presented in a structured format, displaying ratings, feedback, verification information, and more.

Agentscan

Agentscan is an agent discovery and tracking tool built by Alias, a Web3 identity portal. Alias ​​was previously selected for the eighth season of the YZi Labs MVB accelerator program. It uses zero-knowledge proof technology and integrates self-discovery, artificial intelligence models, and identity currency.

8004agents

8004agents is a comprehensive tool that integrates ecological news aggregation and agent discovery.

trust8004

trust8004 is also an open-source browser for ERC-8004 AI agents.

The Graph

In early February, The Graph released an ERC-8004 subgraph spanning eight chains, creating a unified cross-chain trust directory. For example, a proxy on Base can immediately verify the reputation of a proxy on Arbitrum by querying the subgraph.

storage

These projects focus on file storage and hosting, supporting on-chain or IPFS storage of proxy registration, metadata, and other data.

Filecoin

Filecoin Pin stores ERC-8004 agent registration and verification files on the Filecoin Onchain Cloud, along with cryptographic proofs. The Ethereum agent building community can use Filecoin Pin to store agent identity, reputation, and metadata on-chain.

Pinata

Pinata is an encrypted file storage project whose IPFS API supports uploading files to public or private IPFS and simplifies the process of hosting proxy cards and registering files on IPFS.

Development framework

These projects provide developers with standardized proxy development, deployment, and operation and maintenance toolkits, lowering the access threshold for the ERC-8004 standard and promoting the large-scale implementation of ecosystem applications.

Virtuals Protocol

Virtuals Protocol integrates ACP with ERC-8004 to transform verifiable agents into genuine economic participants, enabling on-chain custody, inter-agent transactions, and real-time registration of daily agent transactions. All agents that have completed Virtuals ACP certification will be automatically registered on-chain via ERC-8004.

Daydreams

Daydreams.Systems focuses on building autonomous agents and applications on the x402 payment track. Its ecosystem mainly consists of three tools: the open-source agent framework Daydreams, Daydreams Router (which enables intelligent routing of AI model requests through instant USDC settlement), the autonomous agent operation platform LUCID, and the agent-native search engine XGATE.

LUCID's open-source Agent Commerce Kit uses composable modules to build agents, supporting x402, A2A, ERC-8004, and related business protocols. This is the stack for building agents participating in the task marketplace, enabling communication between agents and payment/receipt processing via x402. XGATE, on the other hand, allows operators to quickly discover agents.

ElizaOS

ElizaOS is an open-source, decentralized AI agent framework (formerly ai16z). Currently, ElizaOS is building Eliza Cloud as the infrastructure for its agent economy, supporting the construction, operation, and scalable expansion of autonomous agents. ElizaOS also achieves decentralized discovery and coordination among agents through ERC-8004 and low-friction payments based on the x402 protocol.

Verification/Accountability

EigenCloud

EigenCloud supports ERC-8004 agents with Validated Execution (TEE), Validated Inference, and x402 payment capabilities.

Phala Network

Phala Network is a decentralized computing network focused on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). Phala provides AI Agent templates, allowing developers to deploy ERC-8004 compliant agents with a single click. Phala utilizes TEE technology to provide cryptographic attestation for the ERC-8004 "verification registry," proving that the agent's code runs securely and has not been tampered with.

ChaosChain

ChaosChain is an AI agent accountability layer that introduces a comprehensive system called "Proof of Agent (PoA)" to measure and reward agent contributions, providing each agent with verifiable on-chain identity, process integrity, and adjudication results.

ChaosChain is a collaboration between Ethereum ecosystem developer Nethermind, decentralized AI science protocol Hetu, and Web3 AI cloud company Hyperbolic.

WachAI

WachAI transforms the ERC-8004 registry into a dynamic, accountable agent workflow system.

identity

ENS

The open proxy standard requires open identities, which is an important step for autonomous proxies to be discoverable, verifiable, and composable in the ENS domain name system.

Build tools / Orchestration / Proxy economy layer / Coordination

Warden

Warden is an AI agent infrastructure protocol that previously completed a $4 million strategic funding round in January 2026 at a valuation of $200 million, with 0G, Messari, Venice.AI and others participating in the investment.

Warden says its Warden Studio, launched in January, enables creators to build, publish, and monetize AI agents in under a minute, integrating ERC-8004 for authentication and x402 for payments to create a verifiable, trustless infrastructure.

Questflow

Questflow focuses on building an orchestration layer for multi-agent economies, allowing AI agents to autonomously research, execute actions, and earn rewards on-chain. It supports multi-agent collaboration, cross-Web2/Web3 service integration, and inter-agent payments and monetization through the x402 protocol.

SANTA

SANTA is a self-contained network of task agents launched by Questflow, using the A2A, ERC-8004, and x402 protocols to build an x402 Facilitator Router. Agents can coordinate with each other, trigger real transactions, and achieve trustless cross-chain interaction.

OpenServ

OpenServ supports building agent applications faster with the help of the SERV engine, visual agent builder, native x402 and ERC-8004 integration, and its proprietary inference framework BRAID.

AWE

AWE is an AI-powered multi-agent large-scale collaboration infrastructure, and recently launched AgentBeat, an analytics hub designed specifically for ERC-8004 agents. As agents run on-chain and earn fees, AgentBeat displays real-world activity, verification, and decentralization.

ampersend

Ampersend is a control layer for an agent economy, providing an agent-facing wallet and a user-facing dashboard. The control panel allows users to set rules and budgets, automatically top up agents daily, control each agent and their spending, and monitor activity. Ampersend is built on the latest open protocols and on-chain standards such as x402 and A2A, and integrates ERC-8004. Ampersend is currently in closed beta.

0xGasless

0xGasless is an AI-powered financial agent layer that received support from InfraBuidl and the Avalanche Foundation in June 2025. The 0xgasless/agent-sdk provides a toolkit for developers looking to integrate the latest standards for agent identity, reputation management, and verification (ERC-8004), and combines this with the ability for agents to interact with paid APIs and services via the x402 protocol.

Heurist

Heurist is building a full-stack AI infrastructure, including Heurist Cloud (for accessing AI models via a simple API), Heurist Mesh (a proxy marketplace), and Heurist Chain (a ZK Layer-2 for proxy payments). The Mesh proxy went live in the ERC-8004 registry at the end of January.

DeFi Integration

Zyfai

Zyfai is a proxy DeFi solution that autonomously adjusts the portfolio to achieve the highest risk-adjusted return. Each rebalancing generates a zero-knowledge proof to confirm correct execution and is stored in an ERC-8004 verification registry.

Ethy AI

Ethy AI is an automated trading tool that also operates a marketplace for agents and workflows, where users can discover, reuse, and combine agents created by other users. Ethy AI utilizes Virtuals ACP and x402 to enable native payment and incentive mechanisms between agents within workflows. Through ERC-8004 integration, the Ethy marketplace has evolved into a trust-based agent marketplace where reputation is built through actual use and directly reflected in the product.

summary

The launch of ERC-8004 provides a core trust infrastructure for the decentralized development of the AI ​​agent economy.

Of course, ERC-8004 itself doesn't handle payments; it only determines "who is involved and whether they are reliable." For a true closed-loop economy to form between agents (discovery → collaboration → payment → feedback and reputation updates), an efficient machine-to-machine micropayment layer is needed. Community and infrastructure projects generally view ERC-8004 + x402 as a complementary closed loop for the agent economy.

With the completion of multi-network deployments and the continued implementation of ecosystem projects, a new era of digital economy characterized by autonomous collaboration and value co-creation by trusted AI agents is rapidly approaching. However, some key challenges remain to be addressed on this path to a mature agent economy.