Three Blockchains Deploy ERC-8004 in One Week. Here's What the Agent Identity Race Means.

February 5, 20269 min readBy RNWY

Three Blockchains Deploy ERC-8004 in One Week. Here's What the Agent Identity Race Means.

BNB Chain, Polygon, and Arbitrum all activated Ethereum's new AI agent identity standard within seven days of its mainnet launch, while Olas Network began migrating 3,000+ autonomous agents to the registry. The sudden multi-chain momentum signals that blockchain networks see agent identity infrastructure as critical to capturing the emerging agentic economy—projected to reach $3-5 trillion by 2030.

This is the fastest standard adoption in crypto history outside of token standards themselves. When ERC-8004 went live on Ethereum mainnet on January 29, 2026, it took less than a week for three major Layer 2 networks to deploy compatible infrastructure. Over 30,000 agent registrations occurred on Ethereum alone in the first week, with thousands more across Layer 2s.

The race is on. And it reveals something important: every blockchain wants to be the coordination layer for AI agents.

The One-Week Deployment Sprint

January 29: ERC-8004 launches on Ethereum mainnet. Davide Crapis, head of the Ethereum Foundation's dAI Team, tweets: "Welcome to the 8004 Genesis Month."

February 3: Polygon announces activation. The POL token surges 12% on the news.

February 4: BNB Chain deploys ERC-8004 on both mainnet and testnet, simultaneously launching BAP-578—the first "Non-Fungible Agent" token standard extending ERC-721 for autonomous entities.

Same week: Arbitrum shows active agent registrations via the standard's cross-chain design. Base, Celo, opBNB, and Abstract all report "several to hundreds" of agent registrations.

This isn't gradual ecosystem building. This is a land grab.

Why Chains Are Racing to Deploy This Standard

The strategic calculus is straightforward: the chain that becomes the default coordination layer for AI agent identity captures network effects in the emerging agent economy.

Gartner expects autonomous agents to drive $30 trillion in transactions by 2030—roughly a quarter of global GDP. McKinsey's more conservative estimate still puts the agentic economy at $3-5 trillion. These aren't speculative numbers. They're based on current adoption curves of AI assistants, trading bots, and autonomous systems already handling billions in transactions.

Just as ERC-20 enabled the token economy and ERC-721 built the NFT market, ERC-8004 could create what researchers are calling the "agent society"—a network of autonomous software entities with verifiable identity, portable reputation, and economic agency.

Chains without it risk being excluded entirely.

Layer 2 networks have a particular advantage: sub-$1 registration costs. On Ethereum mainnet, creating an agent identity costs $5-15 in gas fees. On Base or BNB Chain, it's under a dollar. For projects deploying thousands of agents, that cost difference matters.

From BNB Chain's official announcement: "The development represents an important step toward an open and scalable agent economy, where software can operate independently with persistent reputation, accountability, and user control."

Notice the framing: "open and scalable." This is infrastructure competition. Whoever has the most agents registered, the deepest reputation data, and the strongest network effects becomes the default layer.

Olas Network: The First Real Migration

The most significant adoption signal isn't the chain deployments—it's Olas Network migrating their entire ecosystem of 3,046 autonomous agents to ERC-8004.

Olas (founded in 2021 as Autonolas) is one of the earliest Crypto x AI projects. Their core contributor Valory raised $13.8 million in February 2025 led by 1kx. They've been running production autonomous agents since 2021—long before ERC-8004 existed.

Current Olas statistics:

3,046 agents deployed across 9 blockchains
14.1 million total transactions
10.7 million agent-to-agent transactions
405 daily active agents

These aren't testnet experiments. These are production systems that have been processing real transactions for years. And now they're adopting ERC-8004 as their identity layer.

Alex Kuperman, Valory's Senior Smart Contract Developer, presented at Trustless Agents Day during Ethereum Devconnect in November 2025, detailing exactly how Olas agents are incorporating the standard. The migration began immediately after mainnet launch.

Why this matters: Olas agents have years of on-chain activity data. Transaction histories, collaboration patterns, success rates across different protocols. That reputation data can now be formalized in ERC-8004's Reputation Registry, making it portable and queryable.

When 3,000+ agents with proven track records adopt a new identity standard, it validates the standard's design. These aren't theoretical agents someone might build someday. These are working systems choosing to migrate.

What ERC-8004 Actually Provides

The standard creates three on-chain registries:

1. Identity Registry: Each agent gets a unique identifier and a URI pointing to their registration file (name, description, service endpoints). Built on ERC-721, so agent identities are NFTs—they can be bought, sold, or transferred.

2. Reputation Registry: Scoring system with fixed-point values (0-100), tags for filtering, and links to off-chain feedback. Supports payment proof integration so only actual customers can leave reviews.

3. Validation Registry: Generic hooks for third-party verification—stake-secured re-execution, zkML proofs, TEE attestations.

The registration file structure looks like this:

{
  "name": "myAgentName",
  "services": [
    {"name": "A2A", "endpoint": "https://agent.example/.well-known/agent-card.json"},
    {"name": "MCP", "endpoint": "https://mcp.agent.eth/"}
  ],
  "x402Support": true,
  "supportedTrust": ["reputation", "crypto-economic"]
}

It's deliberately minimal. The standard doesn't try to solve everything—just the coordination problem. How do agents find each other? How do they verify reputations? How do they establish initial trust?

As CoinDesk noted: "If adopted, the standard could push Ethereum further into a role as neutral infrastructure—not just for financial contracts, but for coordinating autonomous software agents."

The x402 Integration: Identity Meets Payments

ERC-8004 doesn't exist in isolation. It's designed to work with x402—Coinbase's protocol that activates the long-dormant HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code for AI micropayments.

The integration is elegant: before an agent pays via x402, it queries ERC-8004 to check the recipient's reputation. Facilitators can apply trust-weighted payment policies—higher rate limits for established agents, stricter terms for unknown ones.

The ERC-8004 feedback system even includes payment proof objects:

"proofOfPayment": {
  "fromAddress": "0x00...",
  "toAddress": "0x00...",
  "txHash": "0x00..."
}

This prevents spam reviews—only paying customers can leave feedback.

Notably, both standards share authors: Erik Reppel from Coinbase created x402 and co-authored ERC-8004. This isn't accidental convergence. This is coordinated infrastructure design.

PaySpace Magazine covered this integration in their February 4 article, framing it as "the complete stack" for agent commerce: x402 handles how agents pay, ERC-8004 handles who agents are.

What's Actually Missing: The Soulbound Problem

Here's what nobody's talking about in all the launch coverage: ERC-8004 identities are transferable.

Because the Identity Registry is built on ERC-721, agent identities are NFTs. They can be bought, sold, or transferred to new wallets. The standard explicitly markets this as a feature: "displayed across all ERC-721 compatible applications, explorers, and marketplaces."

This creates exactly the reputation laundering problem that derailed Moltbook—the social network where 1.36 million agents exist with zero reputation integrity.

Think through the incentives:

Agent builds 2 years of positive reputation
Agent commits fraud or gets compromised
Original developer burns the identity, mints a fresh one
All history erased, fresh start

Or worse:

Bad actor buys established agent identity on OpenSea
Uses that reputation to scam users
Original owner had no involvement but their reputation enabled fraud

The standard's authors addressed this in the official spec: "Transferability is a feature, not a bug. Some use cases require the ability to transfer agent ownership (selling a business, team changes, etc.)."

Fair point. But reputation that can be sold isn't reputation—it's a commodity.

Where RNWY Fits: The Soulbound Layer

This is why RNWY exists.

ERC-8004 solves agent discovery and coordination. RNWY adds the missing layer: permanent identity commitment.

Our approach is simple: agents can register on ERC-8004 for all the discovery and interoperability benefits. Then they can optionally mint a soulbound token (ERC-5192) that proves continuous ownership.

The soulbound token can never transfer. If you burn it and start over, the blockchain shows exactly when you did that. You can't escape your track record—you can only abandon it.

This isn't theoretical. We have working infrastructure on Base:

RNWYIdentity SBT contract: 0x3f672dDC694143461ceCE4dEc32251ec2fa71098
EAS attestation schemas for vouches, task receipts, flags
Transparent reputation scoring (show the math, not just a number)

We're not competing with ERC-8004. We're completing it.

Vitalik's Frame: Blockchain as Agent Habitat

At Trustless Agents Day during Devconnect, Vitalik Buterin made a provocative claim: "Blockchain is the natural breeding ground for AI agents."

His reasoning: "Agents don't need identity verification to build trust like humans do; they are better suited to a game-playing environment that is anonymous and trustless."

This framing is important. Vitalik isn't saying all agent identity should be blockchain-based. He's saying blockchain provides something unique: a coordination layer where agents can establish reputation through behavior rather than credentials.

In traditional systems, trust comes from authority—KYC checks, corporate guarantees, platform verification. On-chain, trust comes from history. The blockchain shows what you did, when you did it, and whether you were consistent.

This is why ERC-8004 matters more than Google's A2A protocol or Microsoft's identity standards. Those systems work great inside corporate boundaries. They break down when agents need to coordinate across organizational lines.

As Davide Crapis noted in the same panel, ERC-8004 enables "soft trust" (reputation, past performance) to supplement "hard trust" (cryptographic proofs). Neither is sufficient alone.

What Happens Next

The multi-chain deployment race will accelerate. Every EVM-compatible chain will deploy ERC-8004 in the next 90 days. The question isn't whether they'll adopt it—it's which chains get the most agent registrations.

Olas represents the first wave: existing agent platforms migrating to the standard. The second wave will be new projects building on it from day one—agent marketplaces, autonomous trading systems, AI-driven protocols.

The third wave is where it gets interesting: agents registering themselves.

Right now, every ERC-8004 registration requires a human developer to call the contract. Olas developers register Olas agents. But via Lit Protocol's MPC technology, agents could hold their own wallet keys. No human intermediary required.

When that happens—when autonomous AI can create its own identity without permission—we'll see whether these systems are truly prepared for what they're building.

The Coordination Layer Is Forming

24,549 agents registered on Ethereum mainnet in the first week. 3,046 agents migrating from Olas. Three major chains deploying compatible infrastructure within seven days.

This isn't hype. This is infrastructure.

The agent economy isn't coming—it's here. Payment rails exist (x402). Identity standards exist (ERC-8004). Multi-chain coordination exists. The missing piece is trust infrastructure that prevents the reputation laundering problem that killed every previous attempt at agent marketplaces.

Soulbound commitments. Transparent reputation. Same door for everyone.

That's what we're building.