Author: Nancy, PANews

Once, AI agents were merely supporting characters in science fiction; today, they are ready to take over the real world. From simple chatbots to intelligent agents with autonomous decision-making capabilities, able to call tools across platforms and complete complex tasks, the AI agent economy stands on the brink of explosion.

Currently, Ethereum, in urgent need of fresh blood, is gathering a group of special "digital immigrants." With the launch of the ERC-8004 protocol, Ethereum is becoming one of the core testing grounds for AI agents.

Over 20,000 agents on-chain, Ethereum and Base become the main testing grounds

At the end of last month, ERC-8004 was officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet and plans to be deployed in singleton form across all mainstream L2 networks in the coming weeks.

This is an important step in the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem toward AI-native infrastructure. By introducing a discovery mechanism and a portable reputation system, ERC-8004 enables AI agents to interact across organizations and carry reputation records between different platforms, providing a foundational protocol for a global AI service interoperability market without a centralized gatekeeper.

According to data from 8004scan, as of February 13, the number of agents based on ERC-8004 has approached 21,000.

From the deployment map, ERC-8004 has covered 16 networks including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Base, Monad, Arbitrum, and Celo, with plans to launch on networks such as Plasma, Metis, and Soneium.

Among them, Ethereum remains the core stronghold, with over 11,000 agents, occupying half of the total; the remaining agents are primarily distributed across Base, Gnosis, and BNB Chain, with scales mostly around a few thousand.

However, from the deployment rhythm, initially, agents were mainly concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet, but with the expansion of scale, new deployments gradually gathered towards Base. Overall, agents on ERC-8004 are basically locked between the Ethereum and Base ecosystems. A mature development environment, liquidity depth, and user base may be the key factors attracting developers.

From the participants' perspective, among these agents, prolific teams have begun to emerge, and it is not uncommon for the same address to operate multiple agents;

from the application direction, the current agent players in the ERC-8004 ecosystem are quite diverse, including technical agents focused on DeFi infrastructure and on-chain tools, market analysis and investment assistants, as well as content generation and creative applications, with some agents even issuing tokens to explore independent economic models.

However, from the perspective of real interaction, the ecosystem is still in its early stages. To date, the cumulative feedback number is about 15,000, averaging less than one feedback per agent. This means that most agents are still in the cold start phase, with actual usage and user interaction relatively limited. However, Base accounts for as much as 73.6% of the feedback volume, far exceeding networks like Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Avalanche, which indicates that current real interactions and active scenarios are concentrating on Base. This may be related to the recent surge in popularity of OpenClaw, igniting the Agentic ecosystem boom on Base.

Recognition data also highlights the head effect in the current ERC-8004 ecosystem. Less than 10 agents have received thousands of stars, and most agents are still waiting for market validation.

One interesting phenomenon is that most agents now support the x402 protocol, achieving autonomous and real-time small payment capabilities, starting to become true participants in the on-chain economy, which will further promote cooperation between machines and spur the agent economy.

Overall, the ERC-8004 ecosystem is still in the early exploration stage, but an on-chain collaboration network aimed at intelligent agents has begun to take shape.

This wave of on-chain AI agent enthusiasm is also drawing attention to many AI projects across various chains, including Chainlink, Filecoin, Render, Internet Computer, Bittensor, Virtuals, Bankr, Clawnch, and more. Meanwhile, some public chains, exchanges, and cryptocurrency projects are also increasing their布局, such as Coinbase recently launching an AI agent wallet with built-in security protection mechanisms, Farcaster supporting OpenClaw agents to autonomously create accounts, Virtuals launching a $1 million monthly agent incentive program, and Crypto.com founder's expensive acquisition of ai.com to layout AI agent business.

Making Ethereum an AI home, proposing four short-term construction directions

AI is the next core narrative that Ethereum is advancing into. In September of last year, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) established a dedicated dAI team with the goal of transforming Ethereum into the infrastructure for AI development.

However, in the face of the rapid development of AI, Ethereum, which promotes the narrative of "the world computer," faces real-world challenges. The computing power of large GPU clusters far exceeds that of blockchains, and training and reasoning large models seem difficult to complete rapidly on Ethereum.

Therefore, Ethereum has chosen a different strategic path for AI. It has not opted to compete with centralized giants on computing power but has positioned itself as a foundation of trust and verification for the AI ecosystem.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin endorses the direction of making Ethereum an AI home and recently shared his latest thoughts on the relationship between Ethereum and AI. He believes that the spirit of Ethereum highly aligns with the ideal development path of AI, both emphasizing enhancing individual freedom, decentralizing power structures, and improving social defenses, rather than allowing centralized forces to expand indefinitely.

But Vitalik also pointed out that Ethereum in the AI era cannot simply replicate existing solutions but should choose a differentiated innovation path, deeply integrating the values of cryptocurrency and AI to construct a future favorable to human freedom, security, and decentralized collaboration.

In fact, the current AI agent battle has already begun, quickly transitioning from technological exploration into the depths of commercialization, with some well-funded accelerationists pursuing "the stronger the model, the better; the faster the progress, the safer," a trend that hides the risk of concentrated power.

In Vitalik's view, the issue of AI development does not lie in computing power or model scale but in choosing the right direction. He opposes blindly accelerating without constraints and calibration mechanisms, emphasizing that Ethereum's AI development should adhere to two bottom lines: protecting human freedom and agency, avoiding marginalization by AI or power structures, and preventing loss of control over AI or imbalances in offense and defense that lead to systemic risks.

The ERC-8004 standard, which the EF is focusing on, has recently been implemented and can provide on-chain identity, reputation, and behavior verification for AI agents, allowing AI to prove itself on-chain while granting users the choice to avoid centralized platform monopolies. This means that the past model, in which platforms set rules and AI were both executors and judges, will be replaced by verifiable decentralized systems, which also aligns with Vitalik's emphasis on Ethereum's core values of decentralization and anti-censorship.

As for the feasible infrastructure construction for Ethereum in the short term, Vitalik proposed four key directions:

First, build trustless, privacy-friendly AI interaction tools. This includes local LLM tools, ZK API payments supporting anonymity, cryptographic schemes that enhance AI privacy, and client-side verification of server-side TEE and cryptographic proofs. He pointed out that this essentially extends Ethereum's privacy roadmap into LLM computing scenarios, enabling humans to maintain control rights in AI interactions.

Second, Ethereum as the AI economic interaction layer. This layer encompasses AI API calls, employment between bots, margin mechanisms, on-chain dispute resolution, and AI reputation systems like ERC-8004. In his view, realizing payments, pledging, arbitration, and reputation management through on-chain mechanisms can make decentralized AI architecture more feasible. This economic layer is not intended to financialize everything but to enable multi-party collaboration without relying on a single organization.

Third, realize a cyberpunk-style self-verifying world. In the past, ordinary users could not audit code line by line or fully verify system security. But with local LLMs, people can have AI assist in various aspects, including using Ethereum applications without a third-party UI, generating and verifying transactions by local models, local auditing of smart contracts, understanding formal verification (FV) proofs, and verifying trust models of applications and protocols. This makes the idea of "complete self-sovereignty" shift from idealism to practical feasibility.

Fourth, reshape markets and governance mechanisms. Many decentralized governance and market design theories (such as prediction markets, quadratic voting, combinatorial auctions, etc.) have long been limited by human attention and cognitive abilities. The emergence of LLM can significantly expand human judgment, making these institutional designs operable in reality.

In simple terms, Vitalik does not view AI as an isolated technological revolution but incorporates it into a larger framework of decentralized civilization construction. In this framework, AI will expand human capabilities while cryptography constrains power structures, with the former bringing intelligence and the latter providing defense and autonomy.

In this trillion-level new market of AI agents, Ethereum's new AI narrative is about building an ecosystem that can promote human freedom while preventing super-intelligent agents from going out of control and simultaneously advancing decentralized AI architecture development.

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