In 2026, alongside the hotly anticipated Gloas-Amsterdam (Glamsterdam) and Heze-Bogota (Hegota) hard forks, Ethereum (ETH), the largest smart contracts platform, might onboard a crucial innovation. With ERC-8004, Ethereum (ETH) will finally become AI-ready in terms of tech context and economical behavior.
This EIP brings agentic economy to Ethereum
Ethereum (ETH), the biggest programmable blockchain, is on its way to become AI-ready as EIP-8004 “Trustless Agents” discussion gains traction. With this EIP and its corresponding token standard, Ethereum (ETH) will become technically capable of hosting autonomous AI agents.
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— Vitto Rivabella (@VittoStack) January 9, 2026
To ensure the execution of economical tasks — from ordering goods to sophisticated actions like prediction market bets or liquidity provision — EIP-8004 brings entirely new structures to Ethereum.
Namely, three lightweight registries can be deployed on any L2 or on the mainnet as per-chain singletons. First, it is Identity Registry, which is a minimal on-chain handle based on ERC-721 that resolves to an agent’s registration file, providing every agent with a portable, censorship-resistant identifier.
Next, it is Reputation Registry, a standard interface for posting and fetching feedback signals. Scoring and aggregation occur both on-chain (for composability) and off-chain (for sophisticated algorithms), enabling an ecosystem of specialized services for agent scoring, auditor networks and insurance pools.
Last but not least, it is Validation Registry, a set of generic hooks for requesting and recording independent validators checks (e.g., stakers rerunning the job, zkML verifiers, TEE oracles, trusted judges) and so on.
Ethereum (ETH) inches closer to six-second blocks with Glamsterdam upgrade in H1, 2026
As a result, Ethereum-based apps will be able to discover agent information (name, image, services), capabilities, communication endpoints (MCP, A2A, others), ENS names, wallet addresses and which trust models they support (reputation, validation, TEE attestation).
The proposal is under review now; it will likely proceed for inclusion in the agenda of hard forks this year.
As covered by U.Today previously, autonomous AI agents — isolated programs that can execute basic economic actions on smart contracts — are trending right now.
This innovation coming to Ethereum (ETH) is perfectly aligned with its ambitions to speed up L1 execution with 3x reduction of block time.
This dramatic enhancement will go live as a result of the Glamsterdam hard fork expected in Q2, 2026.
