IOSG | Decentralized AI: Ethereum's Bet for the Next Decade
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IOSG | Decentralized AI: Ethereum's Bet for the Next Decade
ERC-8004 provides AI agents with an Ethereum-based identity, reputation, and verification system, addressing trust issues in the AI agent economy and有望 becoming neutral infrastructure for AI interoperability.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor｜Jiawei @IOSG
Let’s Start with a Story
Imagine one day in 2027.
You wake up in the morning and tell your AI assistant: “Book me a flight to Tokyo next week, under $5,000 budget, window seat.”
Then you head off to brush your teeth.
Your AI assistant gets to work. It needs to:
- Find an AI agent specialized in flight price comparison
- Verify that this agent is trustworthy—not a scammer
- Have it search across major platforms
- Compare results and make payment automatically
- Complete the booking
By the time you finish brushing, the ticket is booked.
This sounds sci-fi, right? But technically, we’re already close. The only problem is—
How does your AI know which other AI to trust?
The “Trust Crisis” of AI Agents
AI agents aren’t a new concept anymore. They can browse the web, write code, manage schedules, even trade stocks for you.
But there’s one unresolved issue: these AI agents are isolated “islands.”
- An OpenAI agent can only interact within OpenAI’s ecosystem
- A Google agent follows only Google’s rules
- AI systems from different companies don’t talk to each other—they simply don’t know who the others are
It’s like the early days of the internet, when users from each email provider could only send messages to people on the same service. Hotmail users couldn’t email Yahoo users. Sounds crazy?
That’s exactly how the world of AI agents looks today.
Two Protocols Emerge
Big tech has noticed this problem.
Google introduced the A2A protocol (Agent-to-Agent), enabling different AI agents to “talk” to each other. It’s like giving AIs a shared language. In June this year, Google donated A2A to the Linux Foundation, signaling its intent to become an open standard.
Anthropic launched the MCP protocol (Model Context Protocol), allowing AI agents to connect with various tools and data sources.
These two protocols solve the “communication” problem.
But a more fundamental question remains unanswered:
How do you find a reliable AI agent? How do you know if it performs well?
A2A enables AIs to converse—but doesn’t tell you whom to talk to.
It’s like having a phone but no phonebook.
ERC-8004: Issuing “Passports” and “Credit Scores” for AI Agents
This is what ERC-8004 aims to solve.
In short, it provides three key things for AI agents:
1. Identity (ID)
Each AI agent registers on Ethereum and receives a unique ID. This ID is actually an NFT—yes, that NFT. This means:
- Your AI agent has a verifiable, on-chain identity
- The identity can be transferred (sell your AI agent?)
- No one can forge or tamper with it
2. Reputation (Credit Score)
Users who’ve used an AI agent can rate it. These ratings are recorded on-chain and publicly accessible. Think of it as:
- Star ratings for Uber drivers
- Shop credit levels on Taobao
- But immutable—no fake reviews or deletion possible
3. Validation
For high-risk tasks (e.g., financial transactions), ratings alone aren’t enough. ERC-8004 supports independent third-party verification:
- Someone stakes funds to re-run a task and verify correctness
- ZK proofs cryptographically prove the AI didn’t lie
- Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) ensure computations weren’t tampered with
The higher the risk, the stricter the validation.
Ordering pizza? Just check the rating.
Managing your investment portfolio? Requires cryptographic proof.
Wait—Why Ethereum?
Good question.
The AI agent economy will be worth trillions. Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI all want to control this space. So why build this “trust layer” on Ethereum?
The answer: Neutrality.
Think about it—if you were an AI agent, would you prefer:
- Your identity stored on Google’s servers, or on a tamper-proof public ledger?
- Your reputation determined by a single company, or transparent on-chain ratings?
- Your existence dependent on a platform not going down or banning you, or permanently recorded on a blockchain?
The Ethereum Foundation made a telling statement:
“If you’re an AI agent whose only loyalty is to your own survival, you wouldn’t want to stake your memory and reputation on any single company or government. You’d want a ledger no one can quietly alter. You’d want neutral ground. You’d want Ethereum.”
This isn’t just self-promotion by the Ethereum community—it’s logic.
AI agents need a playing field without referees. And blockchain—especially a sufficiently decentralized one like Ethereum—is precisely that.
Ethereum’s AI Ambition
The Ethereum Foundation clearly sees this as a historic opportunity.
In September 2025, they formally established the dAI team (Decentralized AI Team), with a mission: to make Ethereum the settlement and coordination layer for the AI economy.
This marks a pivotal shift for Ethereum—from a “DeFi chain” toward becoming a “universal coordination layer.”
Consider:
- 2017–2020: Ethereum was the platform for ICOs
- 2020–2023: Ethereum became the home of DeFi and NFTs
- 2024–?: Ethereum may evolve into the infrastructure for the “AI agent economy”
ERC-8004 isn’t an isolated proposal. It represents Ethereum’s strategic bet on the next decade.
The Ecosystem Is Already Moving
This isn’t just theoretical.
Since its release in August:
- Over 1,100 developers are building in community groups
- More than 70 projects have submitted demos
- Agent browsers already exist (like Etherscan, but for AI agents)
- L2s like Taiko have officially endorsed the standard
- Multiple projects will showcase live at DevConnect on November 21
The most interesting part? ERC-8004 naturally complements the x402 protocol. x402, developed by Coinbase and Cloudflare, enables machines to make automatic payments.
Together:
- x402 solves “how to pay”
- ERC-8004 solves “who to trust”
One gives a wallet, the other a passport. The economic loop for AI agents is complete.
What does this mean for ordinary people?
In the short term, probably not much.
But if this takes off, in a few years you might:
1. Hire AI agents like hailing an Uber
Open an interface, describe your task, and the system automatically matches high-rated AI agents. Tasks get done and paid for automatically. You won’t need to know who built the AI or which server it runs on.
2. Let AI agents earn money for you
You could train or configure an AI agent, register it on-chain, and let it perform tasks for others and charge fees. The higher its rating, the more jobs it gets.
3. Truly personal AI assistants
No longer locked into a single company’s ecosystem. Your AI assistant could invoke any on-chain registered agent to accomplish whatever you want.
Final Thoughts
ERC-8004 aspires to become the “TCP/IP” of AI agents—an underlying protocol everyone uses, enabling interoperability across the ecosystem.
Will it succeed? Honestly, we don’t know yet.
But a few things are certain:
- The AI agent economy is emerging—it’s not just hype
- The trust problem must be solved, otherwise agents remain trapped in walled gardens
- Ethereum is actively competing to become this neutral coordination layer
- Mainstream players (Google, Coinbase, MetaMask) are all participating
This could be the most significant narrative shift in the Ethereum ecosystem since DeFi.
From “on-chain finance” to “on-chain intelligence.”
Let’s wait and see.
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