Ethereum Bets Heavily on AI with New dAI Team
Ethereum Foundation sets up a new dAI team, proposes ERC-8004 Trustless Agents, and competes to accommodate the emerging agentic economy.
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This week, I'm taking a deep dive into Ethereum Foundation's new dAI team, its mission, strategy, and objectives.
Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!
The Genesis of Ethereum's dAI Team
It's the middle of the month of August 2025, when a group of Ethereum core developers launch 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 Ethereum Foundation's AI Lead) suggests the Trustless Agents standard (ERC-8004) and initiates a vibrant discussion on the type of infrastructure that can power a truly autonomous, permissionless, and scalable AI-to-AI commerce.
davidecrapis.eth
Similarly 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.
Sander Lutz
Davide Crapis Heading the New AI Team
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.
We’re starting a new AI Team at the Ethereum Foundation (the dAI Team).
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) September 15, 2025
Our mission: make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AIs and the machine economy.
The team will focus on two main areas:
- AI Economy on Ethereum = giving AI agents and robots ways… pic.twitter.com/9sWVS4dp0K
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 decentralized AI infrastructure preventing corporate monopolization, with ongoing Silicon Valley partnerships.
Sander Lutz
Building the Standards to Power the AI Economy
Google's A2A Protocol and its Vulnerabilities
For months now, Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) framework has been one of the two main attempts, along with MCP, at standardizing agent's 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 showcase how incredibly fast the industry is evolving and how closely integrated Web2 and Web3 builders already are.
Oliver Knight
ERC-8004: Trustless Agents
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 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:
Marco AI Lead MetaMask Davide AI Lead @ Ethereum Foundation Jordan Software Engineer @ GoogleOr, 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.
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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 create a fruitful discussion.
