ERC-8004 Standard Proposed to Enable Trustless AI Agent Collaboration on Ethereum

A new Ethereum Request for Comment (ERC), ERC-8004: Trustless Agents, has been proposed to enhance the interoperability and trustworthiness of AI agents operating on the Ethereum blockchain. Authored by Marco De Rossi, alongside Davide Crapis, AI Lead at the Ethereum Foundation, and other #DeAI (Decentralized AI) builders, the standard aims to "superpower AI by enabling agent collaboration across organizations in untrusted settings," as stated by De Rossi in a recent social media post. This initiative extends the existing Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, providing a unified interface for agent discovery and trust establishment.

The proposal emerges amidst a growing trend of autonomous AI agents poised to significantly impact the Ethereum ecosystem. Developers from Coinbase, Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr, have previously highlighted that AI agents could become the network's largest users, driving e-commerce and automated services. Their work points to the revival of the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" web standard, combined with Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3009, enabling AI agents to make autonomous stablecoin payments without human intervention.

ERC-8004 introduces a trust layer through the implementation of three lightweight, on-chain registries: Identity, Reputation, and Validation. These registries are designed to allow participants to discover, select, and interact with agents across different organizational boundaries, even in environments where pre-existing trust is absent. While the core trust mechanisms are anchored on-chain, the standard is structured to leave application-specific logic to off-chain components, balancing decentralization with practical implementation.

The integration of such a standard could revolutionize various industries by enabling AI agents to autonomously manage and pay for services like API calls, storage, or computation. This capability could lead to new business models, from self-driving vehicles covering their own operational costs to AI models independently generating and paying for content. Ethereum's robust and trustless settlement layer is considered ideal for this development, ensuring efficient and secure transactions for these autonomous entities.

The development of ERC-8004 involves close collaboration with the Linux Foundation and stakeholders within the A2A ecosystem, indicating a concerted effort to refine and improve the specifications through public discussion. This collaborative approach underscores the industry's focus on building a secure and interoperable foundation for the burgeoning decentralized AI landscape on Ethereum.