As time goes on, AI agents are becoming widely accepted across different sectors, including blockchain. Here is another example of AI agents in blockchain. After the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, Ethereum is going to witness a major milestone as the ERC-8004 standard is preparing to launch on its mainnet.
Before we dive in, ERC in ERC-8004 stands for Ethereum Request for Comment, and 8004 is just the proposal number of the standard. In essence, ERC-8004 proposes a new standard designed for the Ethereum blockchain to “help AI agents interact safely and reliably with each other”.
Why is ERC-8004 important for Ethereum?
The new standard is important for Ethereum as it ignites a foundation for an AI agent-generated economy on Ethereum. AI agents typically make autonomous decisions, execute trades, handle wallets, and facilitate services. The ERC-8004 standard enhances the working conditions of AI agents, such as how they operate and communicate with other agents safely.
To make it clearer, the upcoming standard will enhance interoperability between AI agents developed by different developers on the Ethereum blockchain. It is more like giving an identity card and a rulebook for AI agents on the blockchain.
As Ethereum developers stated, AI agents must be capable of detecting scams in other AI agents and finding legit competent.
Worth noting, ERC-8004 is not built for interacting between AI agents on other different blockchain. Another significant point to note is that Ethereum already has AI agents on its blockchain; however, they are built for a single purpose and lack a universal method to interact with other AI agents. To tackle this issue, Ethereum is imminently launching the ERC-8004 standard.
For the execution part, the new standard will fix the current issues buy bringing a “simple trust layer on the blockchain, using three lightweight on-chain tools, knownas registries”, read an official post by Ethereum Daily.
AI agent-based crypto payments to explode
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle, once underscored that in the coming years, billions of AI agents will autonomously execute transactions on blockchain using cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins. Pointing to this fact, a crypto analyst by the name Crypto Tice tweeted on X, “Ethereum is positioning itself as the payment layer for AI”.
In his viewpoint, Ethereum settles transactions securely and neutrally and the platform is already hosting significant number of stablecoin supply.
Ethereum faces strains after the Fusaka upgrade
While Ethereum is preparing to welcome the ERC-8004 standard, the blockchain platform is reportedly struggling with scalability issues.
Last year, Ethereum underwent Fusaka upgrade to enhance its blockchain scalability. However, a recent research by MigaLabs found out that the network is facing difficulties when handling data-heavy blocks. This raises questions that if the network is genuinely ready to mange high amounts of data from Layer-2 blockchains.
In short, the ERC-8004 standard may help mitigate these issues as AI agents can perform autonomous tasks, including interacting with other AI agents and executing transactions.
