The Ethereum smart contract standard, which enables trustless artificial intelligence agent communication on the network, will “probably” be introduced to mainnet on Thursday, according to Marco De Rossi, head of AI at MetaMask.
Further development of ERC-8004 is “frozen (…) and we plan to move it to mainnet probably mid-week, probably around 9 a.m. ET on Thursday,” De Rossi said Monday on a Telegram channel for protocol developers.
On Tuesday, Ethereum X’s official account announced that the protocol will be live on mainnet “soon.”
“ERC-8004 enables detection and portable reputation, allowing AI agents to interact across organizations and ensuring trust is transmitted everywhere.”
The Ethereum Request for Comment proposes a standard way to register and verify AI agents. Developers can implement this in smart contracts without having to change the Ethereum network itself.
The proposal explains that the protocol is designed to discover, select, and interact with agent AI across organizational boundaries without the need for pre-existing trust, enabling an open agent economy on blockchain.
Agent AI Economy Comes to Ethereum
This standard solves two major problems: how to find AI agents and how to know which agents can be trusted.
Protocols such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Agent2Agent handle agent communication, skill advertisement, and task orchestration, but do not address discovery or trust.
“To foster an open, cross-organizational agent economy, we need mechanisms to discover and trust agents in untrusted environments.”
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“Ethereum is in a unique position as a platform that secures and resolves interactions between AIs,” Davide Clapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, said on Tuesday.
Ethereum is uniquely positioned to be a platform that secures and resolves interactions between AI.
The ERC-8004 standard will be introduced to mainnet. pic.twitter.com/sjMziiPuaQ
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) January 27, 2026
AI services can interoperate without gatekeepers
Telegram developers say the standard will also work on Ethereum’s Layer 2 base, but no timeframe has been given for its implementation.
Base uses x402, an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase and introduced in May 2025. This enables instant, automated stablecoin payments directly over HTTP, allowing AI agents to autonomously pay for services.
The release of ERC-8004 provides the missing piece for AI agents to become economic actors and not just isolated, siled tools.
“This opens up a global market where AI services can interoperate without gatekeepers,” said X’s Ethereum account.
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