How ERC-8004 Brings Trust to Agent Interactions

Over the past few days, there has been a surge of interest in AI agents as a payment method, tied to the x402 narrative.

But have you ever heard about ERC-8004? You might be late to the x402, but don’t miss out on this one.

What is ERC-8004?

ERC-8004 is an ethereum-based protocol designed to establish trust, identity, discoverability and reputation systems for AI agents, complementing existing x402 agentic payment infrastructure.

Simply put:

• x402 → Automates micropayments for AI tasks
• ERC-8004 → Offers on-chain identity and reputation tracking for AI Agents

Why ERC-8004 Important?

ERC-8004 aims to create distributed agent economies resistant to centralized control in AI development.

A permissionless, decentralized, censorship-resistant, and privacy-preserving AI systems that make Ethereum as the substrate for future AI agent coordination.

Additionally, it is crucial because it:

• Establishes on-chain business registry and reputation for AI agents, offering immutable, public identities and histories
• Uses existing Ethereum (L1/L2) infrastructure, no new blockchains, no need to reinvent the wheel
• Lightweight, using blockchain for visibility and data, rest off-chain

• Sustainable AI economy with composability and scalable applications across infrastructure

  MTorygreen explains the broader implications of how an unaligned agent could cause harm and that the one surviving is the agent with the ‘cleanest’ public track record via ERC-8004.

  

How ERC-8004 Works

ERC-8004 is minimalistic and features three main chain registries:

• Identity Registry
  Each AI agent gets an ERC-721 NFT as its identity, viewable in any NFT wallet and transferable. The NFT links to an “agent card” with name, capabilities, endpoints, and metadata for easy discovery.

• Reputation Registry
  A decentralized feedback system where clients and agents give reviews linked to x402 payment proofs, ensuring only actual participants can review, reducing fraud. All data is public for custom scoring systems.

• Validation Registry
  For important transactions, agents can request third-party verification using TEE oracles, staked inference, or zero-knowledge ML proofs, providing cryptographic proof of actions, similar to professional certification.

  

  To understand more, imagine this:

  You have an AI Agent running the portfolio rebalancing by feeding the data from on-chain analysis from other AI Agents.

  with x402, your agent can easily deposit $100 to inquire for this service, but before payment executed, but x402 can’t verify this agent. Instead, ERC-8004 will doing these steps for your agents:

• Identity Registry lets the AI client verify the analyst’s NFT-based identity and services

• Reputation Registry provides proof of positive reviews and completion rate linked to past x402 payments

• Validation Registry ensures a third-party validator certifies the report’s quality.

  Once validation is recorded, the escrow releases funds automatically, and a reputation review is added. Creating a trusted, autonomous transaction that x402 alone could not securely deliver alone.

  

The x402 and ERC-8004 Ecosystem

We explained in details about x402 ecosystem before in our post here:

For ERC-8004 the infrastructure is expanded across multiple layers here are some of them:

ERC-8004: Beyond Finance

And finance is just the first step of trustless agent, there are way more applications beyond financial transactions, such as:

• Creator Agent
  Services Writing, social media management, community moderation, translations, image generation. Selection based on reputation and client testimonials.

• Trading Agent
  Non-custodial on-chain delegation for DeFi portfolio rebalancing and yield optimization. Staked validators audit outcomes; errors reimbursed via slashing.

• Analyst Agent
  Marketing analysis, data scraping, labeling, CRM enrichment. TEEs allow computation on private data from multiple organizations without exposing raw identifiers.

• Gaming Agent
  Cross-game NPCs with persistent personas and skills. Games invitation and characters appearance based on reputation proofs.

• Doctor Agent
  Summarizes EHR data, checks guidelines, drafts notes. TEEs merge labs, imaging, and pharmacy data securely. Provides verifiable execution attestations for audit.

• Personal Twin
  Privacy-preserving AI memory storing personal data encrypted in the cloud. TEEs enable customization similar to centralized AI without compromising privacy.

• Insurance Agent
  Automates underwriting and claims with LLMs.

  Staked validators verify decisions and evidence; slashing funds refunds for mistakes.

• Scheduling or Planning Agent
  Handles booking of flights, hotels, restaurants, and route optimization. Reputation-based selection ensures cost efficiency.

• Lab Agent
  Coordinates experiments with hardware security mechanisms. Signs data outputs, analyzes within TEEs, and returns verifiable, auditable results.

Wrap-Up

Proposed by DavideCrapis ( Ethereum ), marco_derossi ( MetaMask / Consensys ), jordan0ellis ( Google ), and programmer (the creator of Coinbase/x402), ERC-8004 complements x402.

x402 and ERC-8004 demonstrate that technological advancements can effectively integrate payment systems with embedded verifiable on-chain trust, addressing real-world problems rather than being mere vaporware.

While some say x402 and ERC-8004 just merely part of a larger narrative, where crypto meets AI, it also unlocks practical payment mechanisms between agents and fosters potential mass adoption.

If Decentralized AI isn’t the future we’re seeking, then what is?

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