ERC-8004, a smart contract standard for enabling trustless AI agent communication on Ethereum, is expected to be officially deployed to the Ethereum mainnet this Thursday. Marco De Rossi, head of MetaMask AI, stated in a developer Telegram group that further development of ERC-8004 has been "frozen," with a mainnet launch planned for mid-week (likely Thursday at 9 AM ET). The official Ethereum X account subsequently confirmed that the protocol will be launched on the mainnet "soon." ERC-8004 (Ethereum Request for Comment) proposes a standardized method for registering and verifying AI agents on-chain, allowing developers to directly integrate them into smart contracts without upgrading the Ethereum network itself. This standard aims to address two core issues in the AI agent economy: how to discover AI agents in an open environment and how to determine their trustworthiness. By introducing portable reputation and discovery mechanisms, ERC-8004 allows AI agents across organizations to interact without prior trust, thus supporting an open agent economy. Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, stated that Ethereum possesses the unique platform characteristics to "secure and settle AI-to-AI interactions." Developers also revealed that the standard will support Ethereum Layer 2 networks such as Base in the future. With the release of ERC-8004, AI agents are expected to evolve from isolated tools into on-chain participants with autonomous economic behavior, laying the foundation for a decentralized AI services market. (Cointelegraph)