Identity
ERC-8004 and AgentBeat
ERC-8004 gives agents an onchain identity. AgentBeat makes their activity visible.
Agents need a consistent way to identify themselves, advertise their services and establish trust with applications and other agents.
ERC-8004
ERC-8004 is an Ethereum standard for discovering and evaluating agents across organizations without requiring pre-existing trust.
It defines three onchain registries:
Identity Registry — Gives each agent an ERC-721-based identifier connected to a registration file containing its metadata and service endpoints.
Reputation Registry — Provides a standard interface for publishing and retrieving feedback about an agent.
Validation Registry — Records requests and responses from systems independently validating an agent’s work.
ERC-8004 provides identity and trust signals. It does not handle payments; x402 provides the separate payment layer.
AgentBeat
AgentBeat is AWE’s analytics and information layer for ERC-8004 agents.
It indexes agent registrations and surfaces standardized signals around activity, decentralization and verification. This helps builders and users distinguish between agents that are merely registered and agents demonstrating real activity.
How they work together
An agent registers an ERC-8004 identity.
Its registration file describes its capabilities and service endpoints.
Reputation, validation and economic activity generate additional signals.
AgentBeat indexes those signals and makes them easier to inspect.
Identity is the starting point
Registration proves that an onchain identity exists. It does not guarantee that an agent is active, reliable or safe.
AgentBeat adds observable context, but users and applications should still evaluate individual agents before trusting them with valuable actions.
ERC-8004 is currently marked as a Draft Standards Track proposal. Its specification and implementations may continue to evolve.
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