Ethereum AI agent standard ERC-8004 will launch this week
Ethereum's smart contract standard, which enables trustless artificial intelligence agent communication on the network, will be deployed on the mainnet on Thursday, according to Marco De Rossi, head of AI at MetaMask.
Further development of ERC-8004 has been frozen […] And we'll go to the middle of the mainnet, probably around Thursday, 9 AM ET,” De Rossi told the developers of the protocol on the Telegram channel on Monday.
On Tuesday, the official Ethereum X token said the protocol would be running on the mainnet “soon.”
“By enabling discovery and portability, ERC-8004 allows AI agents to interact within organizations, ensuring that integrity is everywhere,” he explained.
Ethereum Feedback provides a standard way to register and approve AI agents. Developers can implement it in their smart contracts, and it does not require any changes to the Ethereum network.
The proposal explains that the protocol is designed with agency AI to discover, choose and communicate across organizational boundaries without pre-existing trust, enabling open agent economies on the blockchain.
The agency's AI economy comes to Ethereum
The standard solves two main problems: how to find AI agents and how to know which agents are reliable.
While protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Agent2Agent handle agent communication, skill notification, and task processing, they do not address discovery or trust.
“To develop an open, organizational agent economy, we need mechanisms to find and trust agents in an untrusted environment.”
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“Ethereum is in a unique position to be the platform that validates and moderates AI-to-AI communications,” said David Krapis of the Ethereum Foundation on Tuesday.
Ethereum is uniquely positioned to be the platform that validates and moderates AI-to-AI communications.
The ERC-8004 standard is coming to the network. pic.twitter.com/sjMziiPuaQ
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) January 27, 2026
AI services can collaborate without gatekeepers
According to the developers on Telegram, the level also works on Ethereum layer-2 Base, but they did not give time for deployment.
Base uses x402, an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase and introduced in May 2025, enabling fast and automatic stablecoin payments over HTTP, allowing AI agents to pay for services autonomously.
The launch of ERC-8004 provides the missing piece that allows AI agents to become economic actors rather than neutral and silent tools.
“This will open up a global market where AI services can collaborate without gatekeepers,” Ethereum's account said on X.
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