Unchained Want to Hire an AI Agent? Check Their Reputation Via ERC-8004
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Feb 8, 2026 
Davide Crapis, AI lead at the Ethereum Foundation and primary contributor to ERC-8004, explains the new trust framework for AI agents. He covers on-chain identity and reputation registries, how agents find and pay each other, defenses against manipulation, validation and watchtower checks, and implications for multi-chain marketplaces and builder tooling.
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Agent Passports Use ERC-721 NFTs
- Each agent identity is an ERC-721 token with a registration file acting as the agent's passport and endpoint.
- The NFT token ID is the agent ID and can be transferred or delegated, exposing changes on-chain.
Passport Versus Backend Agent
- The identity NFT is a passport, not the off-chain agent implementation; backends can be swapped or upgraded.
- Reputation stays with the passport, so backend swaps are visible and must be managed by reputation or validation.
Reputation And Validation Layers Work Together
- Reputation deters malicious backend swaps because losing reputation reduces traffic and revenue.
- For high-assurance cases, the upcoming validation registry will add cryptographic proofs of server-attested outputs.