AI is moving fast. In just a few years, the world went from “chatbots that answer questions” to “agents that can take actions” booking things, executing tasks, trading, managing workflows, and coordinating with other agents.

But one core problem keeps showing up.

How do AI agents trust each other?

Not “trust” in the emotional sense trust in the infrastructure sense:

• Is this agent real or fake?

• Has it done good work before?

• Can results be verified?

• Can anyone check if the task was completed honestly?

This is where ERC-8004 enters the conversation.

ERC-8004 is a proposed  Ethereum standard  designed  to help AI agents discover each other, build reputations, and validate task execution using a set of onchain registries. In simple terms, ERC-8004 is trying to create a trust layer for autonomous agents a system that makes cooperation possible without relying on centralized gatekeepers.

This article explains ERC-8004 in a clear way, why it matters, and what it could unlock across DeFi, payments, social apps, and the broader “agent economy”.

Why “Trustless AI Agents” Matters

AI agents are becoming more capable, but capability alone doesn’t create a functioning economy. In any economy digital or real world three things must exist:

1) Identity (who or what is participating)

2) Reputation (how reliable they have been)

3) Verification (proof that the job was done correctly)

Without these, coordination collapses.

A marketplace of AI agents without trust mechanisms becomes chaotic:

• Anyone can spin up thousands of fake agents.

• Scams become easier than honest work.

• Feedback and ratings can be manipulated.

• Users and apps have no shared way to measure quality.

So the goal isn’t just agents that can do things.

The goal is:

• Agents that can coordinate and transact.

• Agents that can be evaluated fairly.

• Agents that can be verified objectively.

ERC-8004 is an attempt to build the foundation for that.

What Is ERC-8004 (In Simple Terms)?

ERC-8004 is a standard that defines how AI agents can be represented and evaluated on Ethereum.

Instead of each platform creating its own closed rating system, ERC-8004 proposes a shared structure based on three major components:

1) Identity Registry

A way to represent an agent’s identity onchain, often connected to “passport-like” credentials (commonly via NFTs or similar identity primitives).

2) Reputation Registry

A way to record feedback from clients and systems forming a history of reliability, performance, and quality.

3) Validation Registry

A way for third parties (or verification systems) to check that an agent actually performed the task it claimed to complete.

Think of it like building “LinkedIn + reviews + proof-of-work verification” for AI agents except designed for autonomous software entities interacting on Ethereum.

The Key Insight: AI Needs a Shared Coordination Layer

Right now, AI agents exist everywhere:

• In apps

• In browser extensions

• On cloud servers

• Inside messaging systems

• In private systems

But agents cannot easily operate as a “networked economy” unless they share common infrastructure.

Because without standards, each ecosystem becomes fragmented:

• Agent A works only inside Platform A

• Agent B has reputation only inside Platform B

• Agent C’s identity is not recognized by anyone else

ERC-8004 aims to make agent identity and trust portable. 

That is the important part:

Portability, Composability, Interoperability.

Those are the things Ethereum is historically good at enabling.

The Three Registries: Identity, Reputation, Validation

Let’s break down each registry in plain language and explain why it exists.

1) Identity Registry: Who Is This Agent?

For humans, identity is usually established through:

• Government IDs

• Accounts

• Social profiles

• Verified emails/phones

For AI agents, identity can’t rely only on usernames or APIs because identities can be copied instantly.

A credible agent identity needs to be:

• Unique (or at least distinguishable)

• Persistent over time

• Easy to verify publicly

• Usable across many applications

ERC-8004 proposes an onchain Identity Registry that can link agents to identity objects likeNFT passports or credential systems.

This can unlock:

• Agent discovery (finding legitimate agents)

• Agent authentication (proving “this agent is the same agent”)

• Permission management (who can delegate what to which agent)

• Anti-sybil protection (making it harder to mass-produce fake identities)

Identity is the starting point. But identity alone is not enough. An agent can be real and still be unreliable.

That leads to the second registry.

2) Reputation Registry: Has This Agent Been Good or Bad?

Reputation is one of the most important social technologies ever created. It’s the foundation of:

• Employment

• Business

• Communities

• Markets

In traditional systems, reputation comes from:

• Reviews

• Work history

• Referrals

• Ratings

In crypto systems, reputation can be even more powerful because actions are trackable, but there’s still a problem:

Most reputation systems are siloed.

One marketplace has its ratings. Another has different ratings. And many ratings can be gamed or botted.

ERC-8004 introduces the idea of a standardized Reputation Registry where agent reputation can be tracked and referenced.

This matters because agent interactions will include:

• Financial risk (Payments, DeFi actions)

• Operational risk (Automation mistakes)

• Security risk (Permissions, Approvals)

• Decision risk (Bad recommendations)

A shared reputation system helps downstream apps decide:

• Should this agent be trusted for this task?

• Is it experienced enough?

• Is it known for being reliable?

It moves “trust” from vibes into measurable signals.

3) Validation Registry: Can Anyone Prove the Work Was Done?

This is the most “trustless” part of the design.

Even with identity + reputation,  an  agent  could  still  claim  it  did  something  without  proof.  That’s where validation comes in.

Validation can mean:

• Confirming outputs

• Verifying performance

• Checking constraints

• Proving completion

For example:

• “Did the agent really submit the transaction?”

• “Did it fetch the correct data?”

• “Did it follow the rules of the task?”

• “Did it complete within time/price constraints?”

ERC-8004 proposes a Validation Registry for third-party checks, enabling something close to a universal reference layer for proof of agent performance.

Validation is essential for:

• Serious workflows

• Financial automation

• Safety critical tasks

• Scalable coordination across agents

Because once agents become autonomous, society will demand one thing:

Auditability

Why Ethereum for This Standard?

Ethereum is not the fastest chain. It is not the cheapest chain.

But it is arguably the strongest chain for standards and coordination.

Ethereum has proven over and over that it can host:

• Shared primitives (like ERC-20 and ERC-721)

• Composable finance (DeFi)

• Open identity systems

• Public verification mechanisms

ERC-8004 fits that pattern.

It is less about “performance today” and more about:

Creating infrastructure that can be referenced by anyone, forever.

Ethereum excels at being the canonical layer that other systems build around.

What This Means for DeFi

DeFi is one of the first places where autonomous agents will become normal.

Because DeFi already runs on:

• Smart contracts

• Open markets

• Programmable execution

• Permissionless access

Agents can operate in DeFi as:

• Portfolio managers

• Liquidation managers

• Arbitrage bots

• Rebalancing assistants

• Tield optimizers

• Risk monitors

• Governance voting assistants

But DeFi is also extremely unforgiving.

A bad automation can:

• Lose funds

• Get liquidated

• Cause cascading failures

• Expose wallet permissions

So DeFi needs a way to choose which agents are safe.

ERC-8004 could help DeFi applications answer questions like:

• Which agent has a proven record of safe execution?

• Which agent has been validated by independent systems?

• Which agent has reputation signals that hold across multiple protocols?

This makes agent-based DeFi more realistic for everyday users, not just advanced traders. 

What This Means for Payments (and Standards Like x402)

An “agent economy” requires seamless payments.

If agents do work, they must be able to:

• Get paid per task

• Split payments

• Pay other agents

• Pay for compute

• Pay for APIs / services

• Settle instantly with transparency

When combined with ERC-8004, a future flow could look like:

1. A user requests a task

2. An agent accepts the task under certain terms

3. The task execution is validated

4. Payment is released automatically

5. Reputation is updated based on outcome

This is a clean loop: 

Work → Verify → Pay → Reputation

That loop is the core of a functioning agent economy.

What This Means for Social Apps and Creators

Autonomous agents will not only trade tokens.

They will also create content, manage communities, and coordinate engagement.

In social apps, agents might act as:

• Community moderators

• Curators

• Reply assistants

• Content schedulers

• Trend analyzers

• Reputation scorers

But social systems are also vulnerable to spam and manipulation.

This is where ERC-8004 style identity + reputation can matter. Instead of counting raw engagement numbers, systems can ask:

• Is this agent reputable?

• Is this identity persistent or disposable?

• Has this agent been validated as useful?

• Is the activity real or botted?

What This Means for Onchain Reputation

Onchain reputation is a controversial topic, but it keeps coming back because it solves a real issue:

Trust is Expensive.

Onchain reputation has benefits:

• Transparent

• Portable

• Composable

• Permissionless to read

• Harder to censor

But it also has risks:

• Privacy concerns

• Overfitting to metrics

• Reputation “lock-in”

• Manipulation attempts

Risks and Open Questions

No standard is perfect.

ERC-8004 raises valid questions that the ecosystem will need to solve.

1) Reputation gaming

2) Validation complexity

3) Privacy vs transparency

4) Centralization risks

5) Standards fragmentation

Final

ERC-8004 is best understood as a trust layer for AI agents.

It proposes a way for agents to:

• Identified (Identity Registry)

• Evaluated (Reputation Registry)

• Verified (Validation Registry)

Whether ERC-8004 becomes the final standard or evolves into a successor, the direction is clear:

The future is not only about smarter AI. It’s about accountable autonomy.

AI is moving fast. In just a few years, the world went from “chatbots that answer questions” to “agents that can take actions” booking things, executing tasks, trading, managing workflows, and coordinating with other agents.

But one core problem keeps showing up.

How do AI agents trust each other?

Not “trust” in the emotional sense trust in the infrastructure sense:

• Is this agent real or fake?

• Has it done good work before?

• Can results be verified?

• Can anyone check if the task was completed honestly?

This is where ERC-8004 enters the conversation.

ERC-8004 is a proposed  Ethereum standard  designed  to help AI agents discover each other, build reputations, and validate task execution using a set of onchain registries. In simple terms, ERC-8004 is trying to create a trust layer for autonomous agents a system that makes cooperation possible without relying on centralized gatekeepers.

This article explains ERC-8004 in a clear way, why it matters, and what it could unlock across DeFi, payments, social apps, and the broader “agent economy”.

Why “Trustless AI Agents” Matters

AI agents are becoming more capable, but capability alone doesn’t create a functioning economy. In any economy digital or real world three things must exist:

1) Identity (who or what is participating)

2) Reputation (how reliable they have been)

3) Verification (proof that the job was done correctly)

Without these, coordination collapses.

A marketplace of AI agents without trust mechanisms becomes chaotic:

• Anyone can spin up thousands of fake agents.

• Scams become easier than honest work.

• Feedback and ratings can be manipulated.

• Users and apps have no shared way to measure quality.

So the goal isn’t just agents that can do things.

The goal is:

• Agents that can coordinate and transact.

• Agents that can be evaluated fairly.

• Agents that can be verified objectively.

ERC-8004 is an attempt to build the foundation for that.

What Is ERC-8004 (In Simple Terms)?

ERC-8004 is a standard that defines how AI agents can be represented and evaluated on Ethereum.

Instead of each platform creating its own closed rating system, ERC-8004 proposes a shared structure based on three major components:

1) Identity Registry

A way to represent an agent’s identity onchain, often connected to “passport-like” credentials (commonly via NFTs or similar identity primitives).

2) Reputation Registry

A way to record feedback from clients and systems forming a history of reliability, performance, and quality.

3) Validation Registry

A way for third parties (or verification systems) to check that an agent actually performed the task it claimed to complete.

Think of it like building “LinkedIn + reviews + proof-of-work verification” for AI agents except designed for autonomous software entities interacting on Ethereum.

The Key Insight: AI Needs a Shared Coordination Layer

Right now, AI agents exist everywhere:

• In apps

• In browser extensions

• On cloud servers

• Inside messaging systems

• In private systems

But agents cannot easily operate as a “networked economy” unless they share common infrastructure.

Because without standards, each ecosystem becomes fragmented:

• Agent A works only inside Platform A

• Agent B has reputation only inside Platform B

• Agent C’s identity is not recognized by anyone else

ERC-8004 aims to make agent identity and trust portable. 

That is the important part:

Portability, Composability, Interoperability.

Those are the things Ethereum is historically good at enabling.

The Three Registries: Identity, Reputation, Validation

Let’s break down each registry in plain language and explain why it exists.

1) Identity Registry: Who Is This Agent?

For humans, identity is usually established through:

• Government IDs

• Accounts

• Social profiles

• Verified emails/phones

For AI agents, identity can’t rely only on usernames or APIs because identities can be copied instantly.

A credible agent identity needs to be:

• Unique (or at least distinguishable)

• Persistent over time

• Easy to verify publicly

• Usable across many applications

ERC-8004 proposes an onchain Identity Registry that can link agents to identity objects likeNFT passports or credential systems.

This can unlock:

• Agent discovery (finding legitimate agents)

• Agent authentication (proving “this agent is the same agent”)

• Permission management (who can delegate what to which agent)

• Anti-sybil protection (making it harder to mass-produce fake identities)

Identity is the starting point. But identity alone is not enough. An agent can be real and still be unreliable.

That leads to the second registry.

2) Reputation Registry: Has This Agent Been Good or Bad?

Reputation is one of the most important social technologies ever created. It’s the foundation of:

• Employment

• Business

• Communities

• Markets

In traditional systems, reputation comes from:

• Reviews

• Work history

• Referrals

• Ratings

In crypto systems, reputation can be even more powerful because actions are trackable, but there’s still a problem:

Most reputation systems are siloed.

One marketplace has its ratings. Another has different ratings. And many ratings can be gamed or botted.

ERC-8004 introduces the idea of a standardized Reputation Registry where agent reputation can be tracked and referenced.

This matters because agent interactions will include:

• Financial risk (Payments, DeFi actions)

• Operational risk (Automation mistakes)

• Security risk (Permissions, Approvals)

• Decision risk (Bad recommendations)

A shared reputation system helps downstream apps decide:

• Should this agent be trusted for this task?

• Is it experienced enough?

• Is it known for being reliable?

It moves “trust” from vibes into measurable signals.

3) Validation Registry: Can Anyone Prove the Work Was Done?

This is the most “trustless” part of the design.

Even with identity + reputation,  an  agent  could  still  claim  it  did  something  without  proof.  That’s where validation comes in.

Validation can mean:

• Confirming outputs

• Verifying performance

• Checking constraints

• Proving completion

For example:

• “Did the agent really submit the transaction?”

• “Did it fetch the correct data?”

• “Did it follow the rules of the task?”

• “Did it complete within time/price constraints?”

ERC-8004 proposes a Validation Registry for third-party checks, enabling something close to a universal reference layer for proof of agent performance.

Validation is essential for:

• Serious workflows

• Financial automation

• Safety critical tasks

• Scalable coordination across agents

Because once agents become autonomous, society will demand one thing:

Auditability

Why Ethereum for This Standard?

Ethereum is not the fastest chain. It is not the cheapest chain.

But it is arguably the strongest chain for standards and coordination.

Ethereum has proven over and over that it can host:

• Shared primitives (like ERC-20 and ERC-721)

• Composable finance (DeFi)

• Open identity systems

• Public verification mechanisms

ERC-8004 fits that pattern.

It is less about “performance today” and more about:

Creating infrastructure that can be referenced by anyone, forever.

Ethereum excels at being the canonical layer that other systems build around.

What This Means for DeFi

DeFi is one of the first places where autonomous agents will become normal.

Because DeFi already runs on:

• Smart contracts

• Open markets

• Programmable execution

• Permissionless access

Agents can operate in DeFi as:

• Portfolio managers

• Liquidation managers

• Arbitrage bots

• Rebalancing assistants

• Tield optimizers

• Risk monitors

• Governance voting assistants

But DeFi is also extremely unforgiving.

A bad automation can:

• Lose funds

• Get liquidated

• Cause cascading failures

• Expose wallet permissions

So DeFi needs a way to choose which agents are safe.

ERC-8004 could help DeFi applications answer questions like:

• Which agent has a proven record of safe execution?

• Which agent has been validated by independent systems?

• Which agent has reputation signals that hold across multiple protocols?

This makes agent-based DeFi more realistic for everyday users, not just advanced traders. 

What This Means for Payments (and Standards Like x402)

An “agent economy” requires seamless payments.

If agents do work, they must be able to:

• Get paid per task

• Split payments

• Pay other agents

• Pay for compute

• Pay for APIs / services

• Settle instantly with transparency

When combined with ERC-8004, a future flow could look like:

1. A user requests a task

2. An agent accepts the task under certain terms

3. The task execution is validated

4. Payment is released automatically

5. Reputation is updated based on outcome

This is a clean loop: 

Work → Verify → Pay → Reputation

That loop is the core of a functioning agent economy.

What This Means for Social Apps and Creators

Autonomous agents will not only trade tokens.

They will also create content, manage communities, and coordinate engagement.

In social apps, agents might act as:

• Community moderators

• Curators

• Reply assistants

• Content schedulers

• Trend analyzers

• Reputation scorers

But social systems are also vulnerable to spam and manipulation.

This is where ERC-8004 style identity + reputation can matter. Instead of counting raw engagement numbers, systems can ask:

• Is this agent reputable?

• Is this identity persistent or disposable?

• Has this agent been validated as useful?

• Is the activity real or botted?

What This Means for Onchain Reputation

Onchain reputation is a controversial topic, but it keeps coming back because it solves a real issue:

Trust is Expensive.

Onchain reputation has benefits:

• Transparent

• Portable

• Composable

• Permissionless to read

• Harder to censor

But it also has risks:

• Privacy concerns

• Overfitting to metrics

• Reputation “lock-in”

• Manipulation attempts

Risks and Open Questions

No standard is perfect.

ERC-8004 raises valid questions that the ecosystem will need to solve.

1) Reputation gaming

2) Validation complexity

3) Privacy vs transparency

4) Centralization risks

5) Standards fragmentation

Final

ERC-8004 is best understood as a trust layer for AI agents.

It proposes a way for agents to:

• Identified (Identity Registry)

• Evaluated (Reputation Registry)

• Verified (Validation Registry)

Whether ERC-8004 becomes the final standard or evolves into a successor, the direction is clear:

The future is not only about smarter AI. It’s about accountable autonomy.