The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced on January 27 that the ERC-8004 standard “will be live on mainnet soon (main net)».
In a message posted to X, the organization said the standard will enable: New forms of interaction between artificially intelligent agents (AI) within the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to the Foundation, ERC-8004 allows you to: Portable discovery and evaluation of AI agentsThis allows these autonomous programs to “interact across organizations and convey trust everywhere.”
In this framework, standards open the door to: Global market for interoperable artificial intelligence servicesAccording to the organization, there is no need for an intermediary.
ERC-8004 has hard fork not one soft fork This is a smart contract standard and not a change to Ethereum consensus rules, making it suitable for implementations such as Pectra and Fusaka updates.
That means you can deploy it directly. main net through a contract according to its specifications.without changing block validation or basic network behavior.
EF has not specified a specific release date for ERC-8004, but some ecosystem participants have announced that it could arrive on January 29th or 30th.
What is ERC-8004? What is it used for?
ERC-8004, as explained by CriptoNoticias, is a standard that aims to define how artificial intelligence agents can be identified, discovered, and build reputation within Ethereum.
Unlike other ERC (Ethereum technical standards), it does not introduce a new type of token like the ERC-721 standard for NFT tokens, but instead introduces a coordination layer of autonomous AI agents.
In practical terms, this standard enables AI agents to:
- Provide verifiable identity to other agents or contractors.
- Transfer behavior history and reputation between different applications.
- Interact with a service or system without requiring a prior trust agreement.
This is important because until now smart contracts have executed fixed logic. We do not evaluate reputation or dynamic credentials. ERC-8004 allows agents to negotiate services, deliver tasks, or coordinate actions based on a verifiable history without relying on a central entity to verify trustworthiness.
This architecture aims to lay the foundation for an economy of autonomous programs that exchange value and services directly over the network.
In that scheme, Ethereum works as follows. Neutral infrastructure for coordinationMeanwhile, reputation and detection logic are registered on the chain.
Upon arrival main netthis standard could bring about changes in the way smart contracts interact with artificial intelligence systems.