Ethereum ERC-8004 Standard Coming Soon! Tom Lee Supports: A New Solution for AI Agent Security, ETH Will Welcome Powerful Use Cases

Ethereum announces the upcoming launch of the new ERC-8004 standard, providing decentralized trust and identity verification mechanisms for autonomous AI agents, marking a key step in the core layout of “AI + Blockchain.”
(Background: The biggest highlight of Ethereum Hegota upgrade? Researchers propose incorporating the “FOCIL mechanism” to end MEV centralization review risks)
(Additional background: Vitalik discusses AI Agents: building trust with ERC-8004, suggesting applications like real-time translation)

Recently, Ethereum official announced that the new ERC-8004 standard “Trustless Agents” will soon go live on the mainnet. This standard is specifically designed for autonomous AI agents, aiming to provide a decentralized trust foundation that allows AI systems from different organizations and platforms to discover, verify identities, and collaborate securely without pre-established trust.

ERC-8004 is going live on mainnet soon.

By enabling discovery and portable reputation, ERC-8004 allows AI agents to interact across organizations ensuring credibility travels everywhere.

This unlocks a global market where AI services can interoperate without gatekeepers. https://t.co/Yrl0rvnSxj

— Ethereum (@ethereum) January 27, 2026

Three Core Registries: Identity, Reputation, and Validation

The design of ERC-8004 focuses on three lightweight on-chain registries, deployable on the mainnet or any EVM-compatible L2 network, serving as neutral infrastructure rather than handling payments or business logic.

Identity Registry

Establishes immutable on-chain identities for each AI Agent in the form of NFTs (ERC-721 extension). Identity information includes agent name, description, image, service endpoints, and supported trust models, facilitating discovery and recognition in open environments.

Reputation Registry

Allows users or other agents to leave reusable evaluations and feedback, forming reputation records that can circulate across platforms. This mechanism enables agents to build trust without starting from zero each time, improving interaction efficiency and reliability.

Validation Registry

Supports third-party validators (Validator Agents) to publish cryptographic proofs of agent work results, such as TEE or zero-knowledge proofs, enhancing the credibility of task outcomes.

Overall, ERC-8004 focuses on the foundational infrastructure of “discovery” and “trust,” while pricing, payments, and business logic are left to higher-layer application developers.

Expert Opinions: Security Challenges of AI Agents and Ethereum’s Role

Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, states that Ethereum has unique advantages in providing secure interactions and settlements among AI agents.

Meanwhile, Tom Lee, chairman of the world’s largest Ethereum reserve company Bitmine, points out that he believes Agentic AI will bring significant security challenges in the future: these systems will operate outside the current “walled gardens” (closed systems) and enter the real world, where verifying the authenticity of instructions will become critical.

Tom Lee further notes that Ethereum’s smart contract blockchain can serve as a platform to prove instruction sources and record micro-payments and final settlements, making it a powerful use case for ETH. He emphasizes that Ethereum has maintained 100% uptime since launch, which is crucial for high-reliability AI Agent systems.

Agentic AI is going to pose security issues in the future.

– agentic systems will operate outside the “walled garden” of their existing system
– in the wild (“real world”), how will a system know if the instructions are authentic?
– smart contract blockchains can be a place to… https://t.co/FRqrdi2bKG

— Thomas (Tom) Lee (not drummer) FSInsight.com (@fundstrat) January 28, 2026