An Ethereum smart contract standard enabling trustless artificial intelligence agent communication on the network is set to be deployed on mainnet on Thursday, as confirmed by Marco De Rossi, head of AI at MetaMask.
The development of ERC-8004 has been finalized, with the mainnet launch scheduled for Thursday at 9 AM ET, according to De Rossi in a Telegram channel for protocol developers on Monday.
The official Ethereum X account announced on Tuesday that the protocol will go live on mainnet “soon.”
ERC-8004 facilitates the registration and validation of AI agents in a standardized manner. This allows AI agents to interact seamlessly across organizations, ensuring their credibility is recognized universally.
This Ethereum Request for Comment proposes a method for discovering, selecting, and engaging with agentic AI across different organizations without the need for prior trust, thus enabling open agent economies on the blockchain.
Agentic AI Economy Coming to Ethereum
The standard addresses the challenges of discovering AI agents and verifying their reliability, which were not covered by existing protocols like MCP and Agent2Agent.
“To establish an open, cross-organizational agent economy, mechanisms for discovering and trusting agents in untrusted environments are crucial.”
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“Ethereum has the potential to be the platform that secures and facilitates AI-to-AI interactions,” stated Davide Crapis, AI lead at the Ethereum Foundation, on Tuesday.
Ethereum has the potential to be the platform that secures and facilitates AI-to-AI interactions.
The ERC-8004 standard is set to launch on mainnet. pic.twitter.com/sjMziiPuaQ
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) January 27, 2026
AI Services Interoperating Without Gatekeepers
Developers on Telegram confirmed that the standard will also be compatible with Ethereum’s layer-2 Base, although a specific deployment timeline was not provided.
Base utilizes x402, an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase, which enables instant, automated stablecoin payments over HTTP. This empowers AI agents to autonomously pay for services.
The launch of ERC-8004 fills the gap that allows AI agents to function as economic entities rather than isolated tools.
“This opens up a global market where AI services can seamlessly interoperate without the need for intermediaries,” as stated by the Ethereum X account.
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