It was the middle of August 2025 when a group of Ethereum core developers launched the idea that the decentralized protocol should become the base layer of the emerging agentic economy. With a post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, Davide Crapis (soon to become the Ethereum Foundation's AI Lead) suggested the Trustless Agents standard (ERC-8004) and initiated a discussion on the type of infrastructure that can power a truly autonomous, permissionless, and scalable AI-to-AI commerce.

ERC-8004: Trustless Agents

This standard extends the Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) protocol with a trust layer that allows participants to discover, choose, and interact with agents across organizational boundaries without pre‑existing trust. It introduces three lightweight, on‑chain registries-Identity, Reputation, and Validation-and leaves application‑specific logic to off‑chain components.

https://ethereum-magicians.org

Similar to many other experts, Crapis believes that it won't take more than 5 years for machines to entirely dominate Ethereum's on-chain activity. Unlike others, though, he and his colleagues are persuaded that Ethereum is uniquely well positioned to accommodate the AI agent economy, given its ability to provide three key ingredients the ecosystem currently lacks: payment rails, identity verification, and trust.

Is AI the Future of Ethereum? The Network's Developers Are Banking on It - Decrypt

A new proposal from Ethereum and Google developers seeks to make the blockchain the bedrock of the AI agent economy.

https://decrypt.co

Fast-forward to mid-September, when Ethereum Foundation's dAI team is already a reality, and its mission is clearly communicated: make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AIs and the machine economy.

The team's main focus areas are outlined as follows:

• AI Economy on Ethereum: giving AI agents and robots ways to pay, coordinate, and follow rules without middlemen.

• Decentralized AI Stack: making sure the future of AI doesn’t rely only on a handful of entities but has open, verifiable censorship-resistant alternatives.

Currently, the team prioritizes the development of ERC-8004, whereas in the long term, it aims to build a decentralized AI infrastructure, preventing corporate monopolization, with ongoing Silicon Valley partnerships.

Ethereum Foundation Launches AI Team, Underscoring Network's Future Priorities - Decrypt

The team, led by Davide Crapis, will collaborate with Silicon Valley titans and crypto devs on making Ethereum the foundational layer of the AI ecosystem.

https://decrypt.co

For months now, Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) framework has been one of the two main attempts, along with MCP, at standardizing agents' collaboration and interaction. However, back in August, it was lacking in two fundamental aspects: enabling payments and enabling agents to identify and trust each other.

A couple of weeks ago, though, Google introduced its Agent Payments Protocol (A2P) in collaboration with over 60 Web2 and Web3 companies, including the Ethereum Foundation. A2P is an extension of A2A, and it also integrates rails to power stablecoin payments.

This comes to show how incredibly fast the industry is evolving and how closely integrated Web2 and Web3 builders already are.

Google, Coinbase News: Google Teams Up With Coinbase to Bring Stablecoin Payments to AI Apps

The tech giant expands its open-source AI protocol into financial transactions, partnering with Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation to integrate stablecoin rails.

https://www.coindesk.com

ERC-8004 targets to create a standard for AI agents to seamlessly discover, verify, and transact with each other across the Ethereum ecosystem. What's more, the proposed interface would standardize how AI agents establish trust sufficient to engage in economic interactions. It's expected to cement the network as the de facto coordination and settlement layer for the exploding AI agent economy.

It's important to highlight that ERC-8004 was co-authored by Crapis, MetaMask's AI Lead Marco De Rossi, and Google's Jordan Ellis, one of the core software engineers behind the A2A protocol. Moreover, contributions and feedback were offered by representatives of Consensys, Olas, Nethermind, TensorBlock, Deepcrypto, PIN AI, Eigen Labs, and many more. Thus, ERC-8004 can truly be categorized as a cross-industry effort.

As Davide Crapis shared during the first Trustless Agents meeting (see below), over 80 teams reached out to build on top of or publicly endorse the proposal, whereas 8 have already independently implemented it.

The final specifications of the proposal have been published, with a testnet deployment coming in mid-October. The standard in its definitive form will be presented at Devconnect, an Ethereum developer conference to be held in Buenos Aires in November.

You can follow its progress here:

8004 - Trustless Autonomous Agents

The community for builders creating self-sovereign AI agents on open protocols.

https://www.8004.org

Or, listen to the recordings of the Trustless Agents meetings:

I'll closely follow the development of the proposal and report back here, so stay tuned.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.

It was the middle of August 2025 when a group of Ethereum core developers launched the idea that the decentralized protocol should become the base layer of the emerging agentic economy. With a post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, Davide Crapis (soon to become the Ethereum Foundation's AI Lead) suggested the Trustless Agents standard (ERC-8004) and initiated a discussion on the type of infrastructure that can power a truly autonomous, permissionless, and scalable AI-to-AI commerce.

ERC-8004: Trustless Agents

This standard extends the Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) protocol with a trust layer that allows participants to discover, choose, and interact with agents across organizational boundaries without pre‑existing trust. It introduces three lightweight, on‑chain registries-Identity, Reputation, and Validation-and leaves application‑specific logic to off‑chain components.

https://ethereum-magicians.org

Similar to many other experts, Crapis believes that it won't take more than 5 years for machines to entirely dominate Ethereum's on-chain activity. Unlike others, though, he and his colleagues are persuaded that Ethereum is uniquely well positioned to accommodate the AI agent economy, given its ability to provide three key ingredients the ecosystem currently lacks: payment rails, identity verification, and trust.

Is AI the Future of Ethereum? The Network's Developers Are Banking on It - Decrypt

A new proposal from Ethereum and Google developers seeks to make the blockchain the bedrock of the AI agent economy.

https://decrypt.co

Fast-forward to mid-September, when Ethereum Foundation's dAI team is already a reality, and its mission is clearly communicated: make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AIs and the machine economy.

The team's main focus areas are outlined as follows:

• AI Economy on Ethereum: giving AI agents and robots ways to pay, coordinate, and follow rules without middlemen.

• Decentralized AI Stack: making sure the future of AI doesn’t rely only on a handful of entities but has open, verifiable censorship-resistant alternatives.

Currently, the team prioritizes the development of ERC-8004, whereas in the long term, it aims to build a decentralized AI infrastructure, preventing corporate monopolization, with ongoing Silicon Valley partnerships.

Ethereum Foundation Launches AI Team, Underscoring Network's Future Priorities - Decrypt

The team, led by Davide Crapis, will collaborate with Silicon Valley titans and crypto devs on making Ethereum the foundational layer of the AI ecosystem.

https://decrypt.co

For months now, Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) framework has been one of the two main attempts, along with MCP, at standardizing agents' collaboration and interaction. However, back in August, it was lacking in two fundamental aspects: enabling payments and enabling agents to identify and trust each other.

A couple of weeks ago, though, Google introduced its Agent Payments Protocol (A2P) in collaboration with over 60 Web2 and Web3 companies, including the Ethereum Foundation. A2P is an extension of A2A, and it also integrates rails to power stablecoin payments.

This comes to show how incredibly fast the industry is evolving and how closely integrated Web2 and Web3 builders already are.

Google, Coinbase News: Google Teams Up With Coinbase to Bring Stablecoin Payments to AI Apps

The tech giant expands its open-source AI protocol into financial transactions, partnering with Coinbase, the Ethereum Foundation to integrate stablecoin rails.

https://www.coindesk.com

ERC-8004 targets to create a standard for AI agents to seamlessly discover, verify, and transact with each other across the Ethereum ecosystem. What's more, the proposed interface would standardize how AI agents establish trust sufficient to engage in economic interactions. It's expected to cement the network as the de facto coordination and settlement layer for the exploding AI agent economy.

It's important to highlight that ERC-8004 was co-authored by Crapis, MetaMask's AI Lead Marco De Rossi, and Google's Jordan Ellis, one of the core software engineers behind the A2A protocol. Moreover, contributions and feedback were offered by representatives of Consensys, Olas, Nethermind, TensorBlock, Deepcrypto, PIN AI, Eigen Labs, and many more. Thus, ERC-8004 can truly be categorized as a cross-industry effort.

As Davide Crapis shared during the first Trustless Agents meeting (see below), over 80 teams reached out to build on top of or publicly endorse the proposal, whereas 8 have already independently implemented it.

The final specifications of the proposal have been published, with a testnet deployment coming in mid-October. The standard in its definitive form will be presented at Devconnect, an Ethereum developer conference to be held in Buenos Aires in November.

You can follow its progress here:

8004 - Trustless Autonomous Agents

The community for builders creating self-sovereign AI agents on open protocols.

https://www.8004.org

Or, listen to the recordings of the Trustless Agents meetings:

I'll closely follow the development of the proposal and report back here, so stay tuned.

Thank you for reading! If you haven't done so yet, I invite you to subscribe to stay in the loop on the hottest dAI developments.

If you want to support the publication financially, you can either purchase my writer token $WEB3AI, or buy my creator token $ALBENA on ZORA.

I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to reach out on social media.

Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted; rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to encourage a fruitful discussion.