SKN | Ethereum’s ERC-8004 Aims to Put Identity and Trust Behind AI Agents

Key Points

• Ethereum developers are preparing to introduce ERC-8004, a new standard designed to give AI agents persistent on-chain identities and reusable trust signals.
• The proposal defines three registries  identity, reputation and validation  to help autonomous agents verify each other across chains and platforms.
• ERC-8004 is framed as neutral infrastructure, positioning Ethereum as a coordination layer for AI systems beyond finance.

A New Standard for Autonomous Agents

Developers building on Ethereum are preparing to roll out ERC-8004, a proposed standard aimed at solving a growing problem in artificial intelligence: how autonomous software agents identify themselves and decide who to trust when operating independently.

As AI agents begin to transact, coordinate and execute tasks without human oversight, developers argue they need the same primitives that users and smart contracts already rely on  persistent identity, verifiable history and shared credibility signals. ERC-8004 is designed to provide those foundations directly on-chain.

Why Identity and Trust Matter for AI

Today, most AI agent systems operate in closed environments. Trust is enforced through private API keys, allowlists or bilateral agreements between firms. While that works inside a single organization, it quickly breaks down when agents interact across vendors, blockchains or jurisdictions.

ERC-8004 aims to replace these fragile arrangements with open, composable infrastructure. Instead of relying on centralized gatekeepers, agents would be able to prove who they are and what they’ve done using public blockchain data.

The Three Registries Explained

At the core of ERC-8004 are three lightweight registries that can be deployed on Ethereum mainnet or layer-2 networks.

The identity registry assigns each agent a unique on-chain identifier, implemented in an ERC-721-style format. This identifier points to metadata describing the agent’s purpose, supported protocols and contact methods. Because ownership can be transferred or delegated, identities are portable and censorship-resistant.

The reputation registry allows users  human or machine  to submit structured feedback about an agent’s performance. Rather than producing a single ranking, the system stores raw reputation signals on-chain, enabling applications to interpret and weight that data differently depending on context.

The validation registry lets agents request independent verification of their work. Validators could range from staked services and trusted hardware to cryptographic or machine-learning proofs. Validation results are published on-chain, giving others visibility into what was checked and by whom.

Infrastructure, Not a Marketplace

Developers behind ERC-8004 stress that it is not a marketplace or business model. The standard does not define payments, pricing or monetization. Instead, it focuses on shared rails for discovery, identity and trust, leaving economic layers to higher-level protocols.

This design choice is intentional. By remaining neutral, ERC-8004 aims to support a wide range of AI use cases without introducing new intermediaries or central points of control.

Ethereum’s Expanding Role

If widely adopted, ERC-8004 could extend Ethereum’s role beyond finance into the coordination layer for autonomous software systems. Just as Ethereum standardized how value moves on-chain, developers see this proposal as a step toward standardizing how AI agents interact in an open ecosystem.

The development comes as ether trades just above $3,000 following a recent price rebound, even as attention increasingly shifts from short-term market moves to long-term infrastructure upgrades that could define Ethereum’s next growth phase.