Ethereum is gearing up for a significant upgrade with ERC-8004, a new standard designed to facilitate direct on-chain interactions and verifications among AI agents. The concept is substantial, but can it attract developers, generate activity, and ultimately draw capital back to Ethereum’s mainnet? ERC-8004 is on the horizon—a groundbreaking smart contract standard aimed at enabling AI agents to discover and establish trust among themselves on-chain. Marco De Rossi has stated that development on the standard is now frozen, with mainnet deployment anticipated midweek, likely around Thursday at 9 AM.
The timeline aligns with Ethereum’s official X account, which has confirmed that the protocol is set to go live “soon.” The statement further noted, “This opens up a worldwide market where AI services can function together seamlessly, free from gatekeepers.” ERC-8004 is designed to operate without necessitating any modifications to Ethereum’s core network. Instead, it provides developers with a standardized method to register and validate AI agents within smart contracts.
Although current frameworks such as MCP and Agent2Agent effectively manage communication and task coordination, they fall short in tackling the issues of discovery and reliability. The upcoming upgrade aims to close this gap. Ethereum’s price action over the past few days has shown some restraint, yet remains optimistic. At press time, ETH was trading around $3,025, showing a slight increase on the day after recovering from a dip that approached the $2,900 mark earlier in the week. The bounce was accompanied by a significant increase in volume, indicating that buyers took advantage of the weakness. The pace appears to be varied. RSI remained outside of overbought territory and showed a lack of significant bullish momentum.
Aggregated Open Interest surged to approximately $17.05 billion, bouncing back from recent lows. Traders appear to be cautiously rebuilding their positions, opting for a more measured approach without resorting to aggressive leverage. ERC-8004 is set to position the mainnet as the settlement layer for a burgeoning AI agent economy. At this time, ETH price held steady around $3,025, accompanied by over $17B in Open Interest.