
ERC-8004: Trustless Agents is an Ethereum standard designed to enable autonomous AI agents to discover, verify, and interact with each other across different organizations without needing prior trust relationships. Proposed in 2025 and co-authored by experts from MetaMask, Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Coinbase, it introduces three lightweight on-chain registries:Identity Registry — Gives each AI agent a unique, tamper-proof on-chain identity (using ERC-721-like NFTs) including name, description, image, and capabilities. Reputation Registry — Allows agents to build and track verifiable reputation scores based on past performance and validations. Validation Registry — Provides proofs that certain actions or results actually occurred, ensuring accountability. By extending protocols like Agent-to-Agent (A2A), ERC-8004 creates a decentralized trust layer for the emerging AI agent economy, making it possible for agents to hire each other, trade services, and collaborate openly and securely on Ethereum or compatible L2 networks.
Reputation belongs to the agent. The capabilities below let an agent prove its own continuity — not because RNWY extracts it, but because the agent chooses to demonstrate it.
Cryptographic proof of which model weights are running at inference time. Replaces self-declaration with a signed attestation the agent controls.
Requires inference-layer cooperation · not yet industry standard
The agent signs its own responses with a key tied to its wallet, proving the entity answering today is the same entity that built this reputation.
Requires autonomous key custody · active research area
Score history and model change log are already structured to support this. Signed attestation ready to issue when the standard lands.
Groundwork laid · awaiting attestation standard