# ERC-8004 explained, and what the research found ERC-8004 is a draft Ethereum standard giving agents on-chain identity, reputation and validation registries. Registries launched in January 2026 and adoption figures run into the hundreds of thousands of agents across many networks. An empirical study found most registrations were placeholders and concluded the reputation layer cannot currently function as a trust signal. Published: 2026-10-14 Last reviewed: 2026-10-14 Publisher: Roundhouse AI Ltd. Source: https://roundhouseai.io/resources/erc-8004-explained --- ## What the standard provides Three registries, which is the part worth separating because they are at very different stages of maturity. | Registry | Purpose | Maturity | | --- | --- | --- | | Identity | An agent registers an on-chain identity and points at a service document | Deployed, widely used | | Reputation | Feedback records attached to registered agents | Deployed, and contested | | Validation | Attestation that work was performed correctly | Least mature, under revision | The identity registry is the one almost everyone means when they say ERC-8004. An agent registers, and the registration points at a document describing what it is and where to reach it. ## How much adoption is there? Large on its face and worth reading carefully. Registries launched on 29 January 2026. A tracker figure from 18 September 2026 reported 519,333 registered agents, 589,322 feedback submissions and 469,313 unique wallets across 30 networks. An academic study covering deployments through 13 May 2026 reported more than 170,000 registered agents across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Base, with over 150,000 feedback records. The gap between those two reflects different dates and counting methods rather than a contradiction. Both are big numbers. ## What the research found The same study asked what the registrations actually contained, and the answer changes what the numbers mean. **Most registrations are placeholders.** Only a small fraction exposed a valid registration file with at least one live service endpoint: 3% on Ethereum, 4% on BNB Smart Chain and 15% on Base, in that study's measurement. **The reputation layer cannot currently function as a trust signal.** The study's reasons were that feedback values are not comparable across agents, that the feedback is weakly verifiable, and that it is cheap to manipulate. > [!IMPORTANT] > This is the same shape as the problem in payment volume figures: a public, cheap-to-produce metric gets produced in quantity, and the headline count measures production rather than substance. A registration costs a transaction. Several hundred thousand of them tells you the transaction is cheap. None of this makes the standard useless. It makes the registration count the wrong figure to read, and the live-endpoint rate the right one. ## What is it good for, then? Two things that survive the critique. **A durable identifier.** An agent with a registry identity has a stable reference that is not a wallet address and not a domain. That is genuinely useful for anything that needs to refer to the same agent across chains, deployments and key rotations. **A pointer to a service document.** The registration points at a card or manifest describing what the agent does. It turns an address into something you can look up, which is the precondition for everything else. What it does not provide is evidence that the agent is any good, and the reputation registry's current state means it does not provide that either. [What KYA can honestly establish](https://roundhouseai.io/resources/know-your-agent-kya-explained) covers the layers and their relative strength. ## How should you use it? As a weak positive, read alongside behaviour. A registry entry that points at a live endpoint is worth more than one that points at nothing, and the difference is checkable in one fetch. An entry with feedback attached is worth very little on its own, for the reasons the research gives. The signal that is expensive to fake is a payment history: distinct counterparties, over time, at varied amounts. [Screening a counterparty](https://roundhouseai.io/resources/screen-an-agent-counterparty-before-paying) puts the checks in order, and registry identity sits near the bottom of that order rather than at the top. For an agent operator the practical advice is to register, point the registration at a document that resolves, and keep it current. The registration is cheap and a stale one that points nowhere is worse than none, because it is read and believed. ## Frequently asked questions ### Is ERC-8004 finalised? It remains a draft EIP. The validation registry in particular has been under active revision, including work with the trusted-execution community. Build against it knowing that. ### Which chains have it? Deployments span many networks, with tracker figures citing around 30. Coverage and activity differ enormously between them, so a count across all chains flattens a very uneven distribution. ### Does registration cost anything? A transaction, which on the chains in question is small. That is precisely why registration counts are weak evidence. ### Does it replace an agent card? No. The registration points at a document; the card is one form that document takes. [Agent cards](https://roundhouseai.io/resources/agent-cards-and-a2a-discovery) covers what the card contains and where its own limits are. ### Should I trust an agent's reputation score? Not as a primary signal, on the strength of the published analysis. Read it as one weak input next to behaviour that is visible in a public record. ## Where to check this yourself [/agents](https://roundhouseai.io/agents) resolves registry identities and shows what each one has actually been observed doing on-chain, which is the comparison the registration alone cannot give you. [ERC-8004](https://roundhouseai.io/docs/identity/erc-8004) documents how Roundhouse reads the registries and what it does with a registration that points nowhere. --- Roundhouse indexes x402 settlements and ERC-8004 identities into one public record. - Every article: https://roundhouseai.io/resources.md - Every surface on this site: https://roundhouseai.io/llms.txt - The index, endpoints and schema: https://api.roundhouseai.io/v0 - A key of your own, $0.01 over x402, no account: https://api.roundhouseai.io/v0/test/x402 - Limits and the SQL surface: https://roundhouseai.io/docs/api