The emergence of ERC-8004 may find the application scenario role of Ethereum in AI agents.

In the near future, humanity may no longer just “use” artificial intelligence, but could freely “mint” their own AI Agent? When these AI agents can operate in an open Blockchain network and even collaborate with each other, a decentralized and interoperable AI ecosystem concept is gradually taking shape. The central idea of this transformation comes from the newly announced Ethereum protocol ERC-8004 this summer. This article is excerpted from a Blockworks key compilation report.

What is ERC-8004?

The newly announced ERC-8004 protocol from Ethereum addresses three key questions regarding the integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain, including how to find AI agents? What will an open and transparent AI ecosystem look like? And how should these AI agents carry out payment functions? ERC-8004 is currently undergoing industry review, and the smart contract of this protocol has officially landed on the Ethereum testnet this month.

The design inspiration for ERC-8004 comes from the ERC-721 protocol (NFT), allowing developers and users to create AI agents just like minting NFTs and delegating through the ERC-721 channel. This not only makes agent management easier but also allows for the on-chain storage of the agent's reputation score. In terms of payment, ERC-8004 integrates with the open payment protocol x402 launched by Coinbase, enabling AI agents to conduct secure payments and settlements on-chain.

ERC-8004 aims to become a self-custodial open application store

The birth of ERC-8004 is the result of the combined efforts of many parties. Marco de Rossi, head of MetaMask AI, Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, Jordan Ellis, a Google engineer, and Erik Reppel, the engineering director of the Coinbase developer platform, jointly led the design of the protocol, incorporating suggestions and code contributions from various crypto companies and open-source projects.

The agent developers may ultimately charge fees for access to their tools and agents, which can be deployed across various use cases such as enhancing user productivity, trading, payments, and even reshaping consumer subscription models. In the future, AI agents may also be able to hire each other to complete different tasks, similar to the A2A developed by Google, but in a more open manner.

De Rossi believes that this technology may still be in its early stages, but its potential is enormous. In the future, AI agent developers may charge for the use of their tools or programs, with applications covering a variety of scenarios including productivity enhancement, trading, and payments, and it could even disrupt the existing subscription economy model.

However, De Rossi also pointed out that the agents themselves are not stored directly on Ethereum. The reason is that executing artificial intelligence agents on-chain is costly and complex in structure. Therefore, ERC-8004 takes a middle ground approach, not fully decentralized, but it opens up interfaces, allowing developers to operate flexibly between closed and open ecosystems.

In this vision, users or businesses can host AI agents on their own devices or servers, interacting with the Blockchain through ERC-8004. This structure allows everyone to operate an “open application store,” sharing models, exchanging feedback, and building a reputation system. To make it easier for more people to use these agents, De Rossi mentioned that there are currently about six crypto teams developing front-end interfaces similar to an “AI agent browser,” allowing users to search, manage, pay for, and evaluate various agents. He admitted that the current blockchain interfaces are still “extremely difficult to use,” but this presents an opportunity for improvement.

If the platform chooses to limit the visibility of certain agents in the future, establishing a truly open ecosystem will still be full of challenges. However, if the community can participate together in evaluation and governance, high-quality agents will naturally gain more exposure, while low-rated or higher-risk agents will be naturally eliminated by the market.

De Rossi believes that the AI ecosystem is becoming a series of closed islands, similar to the existing app stores, which will only worsen the situation for consumers. To achieve true interoperability, there are likely only two possibilities: either entrust it to the U.S. government or rely on infrastructure that no one owns: namely, Blockchain. He emphasizes that this is not about some abstract slogan of “Web3 ideals,” but about whether it is possible to establish a neutral, public infrastructure that everyone can participate in, which would be the real public infrastructure. The emergence of ERC-8004 may be the first step toward this future.

The emergence of ERC-8004 in this article may find the application scenario role of Ethereum in AI agents, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.