The Ethereum Foundation (EF) stated on January 27 that the ERC-8004 standard “will soon go live on the mainnet (mainnet)».
In a message posted on X, the organization noted that this standard would enable new forms of interaction between artificial intelligence agents (AI) within the Ethereum ecosystem.
As explained by the Foundation, ERC-8004 would allow Portable discovery and reputation for AI agentswhich would make it possible for these autonomous programs to interact «between organizations, ensuring that credibility travels anywhere.»
In this framework, the standard would open the door to a global market for interoperable artificial intelligence serviceswithout the need for intermediaries, according to the organization.
ERC-8004 does not require a hard fork not one soft fork for implementation, such as the Pectra or Fusaka updates, since it is a smart contract standard and not a change to the Ethereum consensus rules.
That is, it can be deployed directly in mainnet through contracts that follow that specificationwithout modifying the block validation or the basic operation of the network.
Although the EF did not specify a specific date for the launch of ERC-8004, some ecosystem participants announced that it could arrive on January 29 or 30.
What is ERC-8004 and what would it be used for?
The ERC-8004 is a standard whose objective is to define how artificial intelligence agents can be identified, discovered and build reputation within Ethereum, as explained by NoticiasVE.
Unlike other ERCs (technical standards on Ethereum), it does not introduce a new type of token, like the ERC-721 standard for NFT tokens, but rather a coordination layer for autonomous AI agents.
In practical terms, the standard would allow an AI agent to:
- Present yourself to other agents or contracts with a verifiable identity.
- Transport your behavior history or reputation between different applications.
- Interact with services or systems without requiring prior trust agreements.
This is relevant because, until now, smart contracts execute fixed logic, but They do not evaluate reputation or dynamic credentials. With ERC-8004, agents could negotiate services, offer tasks, or coordinate actions based on their verifiable history, without depending on a central entity to validate their trustworthiness.
This architecture seeks to lay the foundations for economies of autonomous programs that exchange value and services directly over the network.
In that scheme, Ethereum would function as neutral infrastructure for coordinationwhile the reputation and discovery logic would be registered on the chain.
If your arrival to mainnetthe standard could mark a change in the way smart contracts interact with artificial intelligence systems.