Recently, the CT circle has become chaotic, with everyone starting to study openclaw, each person having a Jarvis! Meanwhile, the giants in the cryptocurrency space are busy arguing and fighting. No one is discussing Alpha and Infra anymore, which is the true tragedy of the cryptocurrency world. In this deep bear market, ERC-8004 quietly launched, but the hype is pitifully low!

January 30th, ERC-8004 officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet. Although the discussion on Twitter is relatively quiet compared to gossip, with only about 500 tweets in the first 3 days, it addresses the most critical question of the AI era: How do machines establish trust among each other?

1⃣ Why is this quiet protocol so crucial?

Currently, 96% of the market value of AI Agent-related tokens is concentrated on Solana and Base chains. The Ethereum mainnet has high gas costs and technical barriers, which deter many application layer developers.

But the logic of ERC-8004 is not to compete on speed (TPS), but to compete on trust. It lays a standardized foundation for AI agents through three major registries.

🔸Identity Registration: Each Agent is an NFT, possessing a globally unique digital ID.

🔸Reputation Registration: A system similar to 'machine credit' that records service ratings and prevents score inflation (anti-witch attack).

🔸Validation Registration: Provides different levels of verification frameworks from historical ratings to ZK (zero-knowledge proofs).

2⃣ Who is laying out plans?

Although the public has not yet noticed, the Infras have already entered the field. The Virtuals Protocol has achieved production-level integration, and all graduated agents will automatically register their identities. In addition, the x402 payment protocol developed by Coinbase is forming a synergistic effect with ERC-8004, achieving a closed loop of 'Agent automatic work, automatic payment, automatic accumulation of reputation'.

3⃣ Ethereum's 'differentiation' breakthrough

In the face of competition at the execution layer, Ethereum has chosen to become the trust layer infrastructure for the AI agent economy.

🔸For developers: With a standard framework, there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

🔸For enterprises: Auditable and verifiable AI services are a necessity in high-risk fields such as finance and healthcare.

🔸For the ecosystem: This is a strategic shift from pursuing TPS to providing 'trust value'.

4⃣ Development path

In the short term, as the protocol is deployed to L2s such as Optimism and Base, costs will decrease significantly. We may see entirely new DeFi playstyles such as the 'intermediary lending market' emerging based on this standard; perhaps the time for DeFi to regain its glory is not far off.

Fundamental protocols are often 'deep waters'. Just as no one discussed the TCP/IP protocol back in the day, it formed the basis of the internet. ERC-8004 is quietly building the foundation of the AI agent economy. In an era where machines are increasingly autonomous, decentralized trust mechanisms may prove to be more valuable than short-term hype.

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