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On January 28th, Ethereum officially announced that the ERC-8004 protocol is about to go live on the mainnet.

We mentioned this standard in our October last year article. If you’re completely unfamiliar, you can refer to this: “x402 Gradually Overlapping, Exploring New Asset Opportunities in ERC-8004 in Advance.”

Actually, it has an official name: “Trustless Agents.” In plain language, it means:

Issuing on-chain ID cards to AI Agents.

The Ethereum Foundation rarely promotes an ERC standard so vigorously. They even established a dedicated team called dAI, included ERC-8004 in their 2026 strategic roadmap, collaborated with Google, Coinbase, MetaMask to draft it, and held a Trustless Agents Day at DevConnect in November to build momentum.

The last time Ethereum took such a serious stance on standards was with ERC-20 and ERC-721.

One defined tokens, the other defined NFTs.

Now, is it AI’s turn?

Ethereum’s AI Anxiety

Why the rush?

Look at some data. According to Cookie.fun statistics, the market cap distribution of AI Agent tokens shows Solana and Base combined account for 96%. On the Ethereum mainnet, projects with recognizable names are few and can be counted on one hand.

Projects with recognizable names on Ethereum mainnet are few and can be counted on one hand.

By April 2025, ETH/BTC exchange rate dropped to 0.017, a five-year low. At that time, many said Ethereum was not the future.

During the DeFi boom, Ethereum was the main stage. During the NFT craze, Ethereum still held the main stage. But as AI Agent hype rises, the main stage shifts.

Solana processes 36 million transactions per day, while Ethereum mainnet handles 1.13 million. High gas fees and slow speeds cause developers to vote with their feet. Virtuals Protocol launched on Base; previously, AI16z chose Solana; even Coinbase’s own AI project isn’t on Ethereum mainnet.

Ethereum needs a new story.

ERC-8004 might just be the beginning of that story.

Let’s Review ERC-8004

Back to this standard itself.

How exactly does ERC-8004 issue on-chain IDs to AI Agents?

No need to understand technical details—just remember three registers.

The first is the Identity Register. Based on ERC-721, each AI Agent mints an NFT to prove “I am me.”

The second is the Reputation Register. Records the agent’s historical performance, who has used it, reviews, and whether it has done bad things.

The third is the Verification Register. Allows third-party organizations to endorse the agent, e.g., “This agent passed certain security audits.”

These three ledgers together solve a key problem: when two AI Agents meet on-chain, how do they know if each other are trustworthy?

In the past, the answer was: we don’t know, only humans can judge. ERC-8004’s answer is to check on-chain records.

This set of tools isn’t something Ethereum invented on its own.

Its underlying logic comes from Google’s A2A protocol released last year—Agent-to-Agent, enabling AI to communicate and invoke each other. ERC-8004 adds a layer:

Blockchain-backed trust.

Google’s A2A solves communication issues; Ethereum’s ERC-8004 addresses trust. One manages talking, the other manages identity verification.

Is Issuing IDs a Good Business?

Taking a bold guess, Ethereum’s logic might be:

For AI Agents to be truly useful, they need to manage their own funds. Not just tweeting or chatting, but directly operating on-chain assets—signing transactions, executing contracts, cross-protocol arbitrage…

Right now, no one dares to do this at scale. The reason is simple: how do you know this agent won’t just transfer your money away? Recently, ClawdBot, which has gone viral, already faced community reports of negative incidents.

Web2 solutions rely on platform endorsements. You trust OpenAI’s API because it’s backed by OpenAI. If something goes wrong, you find OpenAI.

Web3 has no such thing. Agents are open-source, deployment is permissionless, and run on-chain without oversight. When you call a stranger’s agent service, who’s behind it? Is the code safe? Has it maliciously acted before? These questions can’t be easily answered.

In essence, ERC-8004 is about bringing traditional financial KYC processes onto the blockchain. Ethereum is betting that once AI Agents start handling real money, this framework will become essential.

DeFi protocols that want to integrate external agents will need to verify their on-chain identities first. Institutions using agents for trade execution will need to check their history. Auditors can provide on-chain certifications, similar to security audits of smart contracts.

This is a strategic positioning move.

Ethereum recognizes it has lost at the execution layer but still holds the trust layer. Institutional acceptance, security audit ecosystems, TVL—these are Ethereum’s existing assets. ERC-8004 aims to bundle these assets into a standard, defining “what compliant AI Agents look like” before others do.

The question is: does this demand currently exist?

Standards Precede Demand

After discussing Ethereum’s strategy, let’s look at reality. What are current on-chain AI Agents doing?

Following the wave of AI memes last year and the rapid progress of leading AI companies’ products over the past year or two, few are paying attention to on-chain AI Agents anymore.

But they still make progress.

For example, ai16z rebranded as ElizaOS, transforming from a single agent to a cross-chain platform; Virtuals Protocol is developing AI DApps, planning to enter physical robotics by 2026; other projects like AI Agents in Surf can automatically execute DeFi trading strategies.

But here’s the question: do they really need ERC-8004?

Luna’s users trust Luna because it’s developed by Virtuals’ core team. Agents on ElizaOS are used because they run within ElizaOS framework; Surf executes strategies for you, often trusting the application itself.

Trust comes from the platform, not on-chain identity.

ERC-8004’s envisioned scenario: a stranger agent approaches you, with no platform endorsement or brand recognition—you only judge its trustworthiness through on-chain records.

When will this happen?

When AI Agents truly achieve cross-protocol, cross-platform, cross-organization autonomous invocation. An agent borrows from Aave, trades on Uniswap, then moves to another protocol for yield—all without human approval…

But that scene doesn’t exist yet.

Current AI Agents, no matter how complex, fundamentally operate within a single platform. They don’t need to prove themselves to unfamiliar protocols because they don’t even attempt to access them.

Given the current crypto market enthusiasm, they have no reason to knock on strangers’ doors—unless they can create a new narrative together.

So, ERC-8004 addresses a future problem.

If AI Agents evolve from toys to tools, Ethereum’s trust infrastructure becomes valuable. If the agent economy grows large enough, cross-platform invocation becomes routine, and ERC-8004 can generate transaction fees.

Many ifs.

Therefore, this forward-looking layout is likely to be first adopted by institutions.

By the end of 2025, SharpLink Gaming announced a $170 million ETH staking strategy on Ethereum. Around the same time, net outflows from exchanges exceeded 23,000 ETH, flowing into private wallets and staking protocols.

These funds might be for Ethereum 12 to 18 months later.

For retail investors, ERC-8004 isn’t a strong catalyst.

Betting on ERC-8004 itself? It’s an open standard, no tokens involved, no direct investment—only some related small projects. Betting on Ethereum is possible, but its price is influenced by many factors; AI Agents are just one narrative.

So, there’s currently no clean target to precisely bet on the proposition that “AI Agents need on-chain identity.”

Ethereum isn’t solely the infrastructure for AI, and its identity anxiety won’t be fully eased by AI. Building an AI ID business remains a long road.

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