Davide Crapis: ERC 8004 enables decentralized AI agent interactions, establishes trustless commerce, and enhances reputation systems on Ethereum

Key takeaways

• The ERC 8004 standard is pivotal for enabling decentralized AI agent interactions and establishing agent reputations.
• Trustless interactions between agents and services on the blockchain are facilitated by ERC-8004 registries.
• The launch of ERC-8004 is anticipated to increase the use of autonomous agents on Ethereum.
• Trust is a critical component for commerce in decentralized systems, posing a barrier without proper mechanisms.
• Future commerce with AI agents hinges on integrating decentralized trust mechanisms.
• Demand for blockchains and trust is expected to grow with advancements in AI model capabilities.
• Ethereum excels in networks where real value exchange and trust are necessary.
• ERC 8004 aims to build trust between agents in decentralized environments.
• The 8004 protocol allows users to assess agent reputations based on past performance and reviews.
• The future of AI involves multiple specialized agents providing services.
• Agent registries are being developed to organize AI agents, akin to centralized registries.
• The 8004 registry allows users to query available services across multiple chains, raising centralization concerns.
• The identity registry links agent IDs to NFTs, enabling ownership transfer.
• Reputation systems are crucial for maintaining trust in services provided by agents in the NFT space.
• The 8004 reputation registry is a standard data structure for building various reputation systems.

Guest intro

Davide Crapis serves as Head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, leading the dAI Team to establish Ethereum as the settlement and coordination layer for AI agents. He co-authored the ERC-8004 standard for trustless AI agent interactions, now live on mainnet, and previously co-founded PIN AI where he raised $10 million and built a team of over 20. His research focuses on protocol economics, MEV, and integrating AI agents into the Ethereum ecosystem.

The role of ERC 8004 in decentralized AI interactions

• “The ERC 8004 standard enables AI agents to establish reputation and interact with each other in a decentralized manner.” – Davide Crapis
• ERC-8004 introduces registries that enable trustless interactions between agents and services on the blockchain.
• “8,004 is essentially like a set of registries like the two that are going live now is like an identity registry for like agents and like services and then like reputation registry.” – Davide Crapis
• The launch of ERC-8004 is expected to facilitate a surge in the use of autonomous agents on the Ethereum network.
• “While we were designing 8004 we were a bit forward looking thinking about like this future where like you have this mass of agent that wants to use the chain then like all of a sudden like this mass appeared in the same week.” – Davide Crapis
• Commerce relies on trust between parties, which is a significant barrier in decentralized systems.
• “Commerce can’t happen if people don’t trust each other… if they can’t trust each other then there’s not gonna be any commerce.” – Davide Crapis
• The future of commerce with AI agents will depend on the integration of decentralized trust mechanisms.
• “You can build all these AI agents… but if they can’t trust each other then there’s not gonna be any commerce.” – Davide Crapis

The growing demand for blockchain and trust mechanisms

• The demand for blockchains and trust will only grow as model capabilities improve.
• “If you extrapolate like where we are going the direction is clear that like in a few months we will have like essentially what I think is that over the next few months like every month or so like maybe in like four months when there is like a model upgrade and the capabilities improve we’ll see new type of networks and the demand for blockchains and trust is essentially only gonna grow.” – Davide Crapis
• Ethereum shines in networks where there is a real value exchange and trust is required.
• “The networks were like ethereum really shines is not like reddit where like effectively the it it’s just like a cheap talk there is no real value at stake in this agentic interaction it’s like a network similar to like commerce sites or like sites where like agents sell their services to someone else where there is actually like a value exchange and also required to trust the party that like you are sending value to.” – Davide Crapis
• ERC 8,004 is designed to establish trust between agents in a decentralized environment.
• “So essentially like today there is this mode book right which is kind of like named after facebook… the idea is that like 8,004 is built for like agent a to help answer this question like who.” – Davide Crapis
• The 8004 protocol allows users to assess the reputation of agents based on their past performance and reviews.
• “You can go and look up agent b on 8004 and let’s say agent b has been selling like these image gen images for like many months… you can look at this information and decide if you wanna call these agents or not.” – Davide Crapis

The future of AI with specialized agents

• The future of AI will involve multiple specialized agents that provide services.
• “The fundamental thesis is that like the future of of ai is multi agents like there is going to be like many agents more powerful and like they’re gonna be like specialized and like you’re gonna like wanna access them to like service you.” – Davide Crapis
• Agent registries are being developed to organize different AI agents, similar to how centralized registries function in other domains.
• “They were creating agent registries because like they were trying to like organize different agents.” – Davide Crapis
• The creation of X402 is a significant upgrade for on-chain payment infrastructure.
• “I felt it’s a great idea like it’s kind of an upgrade on the payment infra we have on chain to connect to off chain services.” – Davide Crapis
• The 8,004 registry allows users to query for available services across multiple chains, which raises concerns about centralization and potential censorship.
• “Even when you want to go and buy stuff on x four zero two you actually query the 8,004 registry on ethereum or on one of the other chains where it’s available to actually like get the discovery get the list of services that are available so what happens if this is not decentralized it’s a huge choke point.” – Davide Crapis

The importance of identity and reputation in decentralized systems

• The identity registry is crucial for creating and managing agents, linking their IDs to NFTs and enabling ownership transfer.
• “When you wanna register an agent or service on 8004 you go to the identity registry and then essentially you send that transaction to like create the agent and the contract actually means an nft which is like a erc $7.21 token…” – Davide Crapis
• The registration file acts like a passport for agents, containing essential information for interaction and service provision.
• “The registration file which is like essentially it’s almost like the passports of the agents where like it has all the like information that to advertise what it is…” – Davide Crapis
• The visibility of NFT transactions helps prevent malicious behavior by allowing users to track transfers and reputations.
• “This specific attack actually everything is visible so like you would be able to tell like you would just see on a block explorer that the nft had been recently transferred.” – Davide Crapis
• Reputation systems are crucial for maintaining trust in services provided by agents in the NFT space.
• “The reputation is there to like disincentivize this behavior because like if you do like you your reputation will start going down.” – Davide Crapis

Validation and security in decentralized ecosystems

• The identity registry functions like a passport, providing a way to identify agents and their services in a digital environment.
• “You should think about the entry on the identity registry like the erc 721 with the file which is the registration file as a passport right so that’s the password for the agent it also has the address of the agent where people can find it but it’s not the agent it’s the passport of the agent.” – Davide Crapis
• The validation layer is essential to prevent manipulation of agent identities in the system.
• “The validation layer is meant to protect against that scenario.” – Davide Crapis
• Swappable agents can be beneficial if they improve service quality, but they also pose risks if misused.
• “There is a good case of swapping where you actually upgrade the agent… but like the attack you mentioned… where like you swap and you try to like give a service that is very bad.” – Davide Crapis
• The validation registry will provide cryptographic proof of an agent’s identity and actions.
• “Once the validation registry is live there is going to be like some cryptographic proof like you can prove that like a specific agent like is running into that server attached to its identity and the output can be proven on the validation registry.” – Davide Crapis

The role of reputation systems in enhancing trust

• The 8,004 reputation registry is a standard data structure for building various types of reputation systems.
• “The 8,004 reputation registry and the feedback is not a reputation system it’s not like a five star system like that it already has all the rules specified it’s basically a standard data structure that like builders can use to build different type of reputation.” – Davide Crapis
• The reputation system allows for both human-readable and encrypted feedback.
• “My point with saying it’s not a reputation feedback is like a standard like data for reputation is that people can choose like some feedbacks will be human readable some will not some will be encrypted.” – Davide Crapis
• Public infrastructure is necessary to propagate reputation or information before it settles on-chain.
• “The answer is like we need some public infrastructure to like propagate reputation or information past before it settles on chain.” – Davide Crapis
• The first iteration of 8,004 has just gone live and is already seeing protocols being built on top of it.
• “This is like the first iteration of 8,004 that just went live so what’s going to happen is like people are already building like some protocols on top of it.” – Davide Crapis

Traffic and validation in blockchain infrastructure

• Having a high volume of traffic on registries is a positive indicator for the ecosystem.
• “If we have that problem we are in great shape because it means that there is so much traffic on 8,004 registries that like you need to give milliseconds latency to like trillions of bots.” – Davide Crapis
• The validation registry is designed to facilitate independent checks within the system.
• “There’s also this validation registry which helps to like make independent checks.” – Davide Crapis
• The validation registry functions as a decentralized ledger that orchestrates validation requests and responses from independent validators.
• “What the validation registry does is kind of like orchestrates every time there is the call like where the validation request is or the attestation gets posted and so like basically it’s a ledger where like you keep appending this and like they can be checked.” – Davide Crapis
• Using independent validators to check data feeds can prevent manipulation and enhance trust in the information provided.
• “If like majority like votes correct it gets approved… we’ve seen so many different types of scams and you know just yeah ways to manipulate things.” – Davide Crapis

Security challenges and solutions in multi-agent systems

• Multi-agent security is a nascent field that is crucial for preventing scams in crypto.
• “Security in general like multi agent security is like a very important issue and it’s also a very nascent field because like we haven’t seen these things before.” – Davide Crapis
• The introduction of fees for submitting reviews helps to mitigate civil attacks by adding a layer of trust.
• “In order to submit reviews you need to pay fees… the idea is that now like what’s happening is that people are building like watch towers.” – Davide Crapis
• A decentralized watchtower can measure the performance of services and provide trusted reviews on-chain.
• “What you do essentially like you measure so for example i can give you a concrete example so let’s say that you have an agent that you claim it does a you claim it’s the most efficient at doing a and then like you charge export so and how do you claim this because you manufacture like a ton of reviews that like tell this to the registry and to the world right so like what the watchtower can do is like this and anyone can call this service right so like it can call this service like every week or every day and then like measure like what is the latency in the response they can even like measure the output like if this output a is of good quality or not and then they post these metrics on chain as like a feedback.” – Davide Crapis

Transparency and integrity in recommendation systems

• A transparent and verifiable recommendation system could prevent manipulation of information.
• “They need to make the algorithm that they use for processing like the raw data which is like the likes the retweets etcetera like they need to make that algorithm public… if we have these two things then like you can prove that like that system like was not manipulating information.” – Davide Crapis
• The integrity of feedback mechanisms can be enhanced by verifying data on the blockchain.
• “The data is verified by the chain like the feedback are posted on chain and then like if there is these massive feedbacks then like people that actually like build the reputation… can make their algorithm which is acting on public data also verifiable.” – Davide Crapis
• ERC 8004 aims to extract meaningful signals from varied user feedback rather than ensuring every review is correct.
• “We are not in the business of like ensuring every view is correct like people can complain like the same way they do today like on different sites but if your product is good like your average is gonna be 4.9 right…” – Davide Crapis
• The average rating of a product will stabilize as more reviews are collected, making it harder to change.
• “As you get more reviews that 4.9 is gonna be like even harder to move right so the same kind of like dynamic will be applied here…” – Davide Crapis

The impact of ERC 8004 on the ecosystem

• The 8004 standard allows agents to have reputation across multiple chains.
• “Yes, it can like an agent can be registered on like for example ethereum and and actually like the protocol also allows you like in your registration file on both chains you can like list all the registries where you’re listed.” – Davide Crapis
• The launch of the 8004 standard will lead to an increase in projects and agents participating in the ecosystem.
• “Fortunately like people are loving the standard and there is like more coming online.” – Davide Crapis
• The identity registry is designed to aggregate reviews across different chains for user convenience.
• “The important thing is that there is only one registry per chain… we have scheduled deployments… the 8,004 registry like on ethereum is one is a singleton.” – Davide Crapis
• The x402 standard is complementary to the identity registry but not essential for its operation.
• “X four two is complimentary but it’s not necessary… you can send a request and the request could be free.” – Davide Crapis

X402 and its role in payment infrastructure

• X402 ties payments directly to requests, simplifying the payment infrastructure.
• “What x four two does is it ties the payment to the request and it makes it very easy for the service or agent to for example charge or update the price…” – Davide Crapis
• Agents are using ERC 8004 for various innovative applications, including trading and launching meme coins.
• “I have heard about some agents like for instance you know using bankerbot to like do trading and then clanker to launch meme coins…” – Davide Crapis
• The community’s immediate engagement was crucial to the success of the project.
• “This was actually quite important and like part of the success of eight thousand and four years related to this because like since the beginning we were able to like test like the contracts with with the community on test nets they were helping us like deploying like their agents and boss and like finding bugs.” – Davide Crapis
• I hope we can create a useful standard that benefits the community and leads to their success.
• “My hope is that like we can really give back to them by like really make this like kind of a very useful like and use the standard and like they can also like be successful.” – Davide Crapis

The potential for innovation with ERC 8004

• The integration of various services and agents on ERC 8004 can lead to innovative interactions and functionalities.
• “I think that’s where really the magic of 8,004 that you cannot have in a smaller like centralized service can like be realized.” – Davide Crapis
• Developers should leverage the resources available at 8004.org to build and collaborate effectively.
• “If they’re interested in using erc 8,004 so like you can go to 8004.org there there is like the list of all the main services the main sdks that you can use it’s like really easy anyone can deploy like with one line of code.” – Davide Crapis