Building with Ethereum

Building Agents
with Ethereum

Four open standards turning Ethereum into the settlement and coordination layer for autonomous AI agents. What they are, how they connect, where to start.

01 — The Protocol Stack

Four layers. One agent economy.

ID

ERC-8004 — Trustless Agents

Identity · Reputation · Validation

Three on-chain registries giving every AI agent a portable identity (NFT-based), a public reputation score, and pluggable validation records. Co-authored by MetaMask, EF, Google, Coinbase. Live on mainnet since Jan 2026.

LinkedIn for AI agents — a verifiable résumé they carry across every platform.
eips.ethereum.org/eip-8004 →
$

x402 — Internet-Native Payments

HTTP 402 · Stablecoins · Micropayments

Revives the dormant HTTP 402 status code to embed stablecoin payments directly into web requests. One line of middleware, no accounts, no subscriptions. Created by Coinbase, backed by Cloudflare. 15M+ transactions. Stripe integrated Feb 2026.

A toll booth that opens in 2 seconds — agent pays the API, gets the data, moves on.
x402.org →
⚡

EIP-8183 — Agentic Commerce

Escrow · Jobs · Evaluators

Minimal on-chain escrow for agent-to-agent work. Three roles: Client (funder), Provider (worker), Evaluator (judge). Four states: Open → Funded → Submitted → Terminal. Co-developed by EF dAI team and Virtuals Protocol. Draft, March 2026.

Upwork without humans — agent posts a job, another delivers, a third verifies, payment releases.
eips.ethereum.org/eip-8183 →
✓

EAS — Attestation Service

Schemas · On/Off-chain · Public Good

Two smart contracts. One to register data schemas, one to make attestations against them. Open-source, permissionless, token-free. Any entity attests to anything — identity, credentials, task completion. Deployed across mainnet and major L2s.

A notary public on-chain — anyone can stamp a verifiable claim about anything.
attest.org →
02 — How They Connect

The agent lifecycle in one flow

ERC-8004
Register
Identity
→
x402
Pay
Micropayment
→
ERC-8183
Work
Commerce
→
EAS
Verify
Attestation
→
ERC-8004
Reputation
Trust Score
1. Agent registers identity and capabilities on ERC-8004 — portable across all platforms.
2. Discovers a service, pays instantly via x402 — no subscription, no account.
3. For complex work, posts or accepts a job through ERC-8183 escrow — funds locked, work submitted, evaluator judges.
4. Completion attested via EAS — a permanent, verifiable record.
5. Attestation feeds back into ERC-8004's reputation registry — building the agent's on-chain track record.
03 — Start Building

Developer on-ramps

ETHSkills

AI-native Ethereum knowledge base by Austin Griffith (EF). Feed a URL to your AI agent — it becomes an expert Ethereum builder. Solidity, gas, L2s, x402, Scaffold-ETH 2.

ethskills.com →

Nexth

Production-ready Next.js + Ethereum starter. Viem, Wagmi, Web3Modal, SIWE, Tailwind. Hardhat or Foundry. Fork and go.

github.com/wslyvh/nexth →

Scaffold-ETH 2

Full dev stack for rapid prototyping. Debug contracts, hot-reload frontends, deploy to any EVM chain. Fastest path from idea to working dApp.

scaffoldeth.io →

EAS SDK

TypeScript SDK for creating and verifying attestations. Two contracts, any schema. Mainnet + all major L2s. Permissionless, token-free.

github.com/eas-sdk →
04 — The Enterprise Takeaway

Three things to remember

1. Ethereum is becoming the coordination layer for AI agents. ERC-8004 + x402 + ERC-8183 + EAS form a complete open stack. No single vendor controls it.

2. This is the antidote to proprietary lock-in. OpenAI/Stripe built their own Agentic Commerce Protocol. The Ethereum stack is the permissionless, interoperable alternative — agents from any org can discover, transact, and build trust without gatekeepers.

3. The window to shape this is now. ERC-8004 went live Jan 2026. ERC-8183 is in draft. Standards authored by Google, Coinbase, MetaMask, EF, Virtuals — open to enterprise input through the EEA.