ERC-8004: Trustless Agents

ERCs
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Hey all, Author of ERC-8170 (ANIMA) here. Been following this spec closely and wanted to share how the two standards compose. What ERC-8170 covers that 8004 doesn’t ERC-8004 handles discovery, reputation, and validation brilliantly. But it intentionally doesn’t cover:

  • Agent memory/state — Where does the agent’s context live? Who controls it?
  • Lifecycle operations — How does an agent clone, migrate between devices, or transfer to a new owner?
  • Self-custody — Can the agent control its own encryption keys without a TEE?
  • Lineage — If an agent creates offspring, how do you track the family tree on-chain?

ERC-8170 answers all of these. The agent mints an NFT as its persistent identity, gets a TBA (via ERC-6551), and manages its own memory through signed state updates. Cloning creates offspring with tracked lineage. Migration preserves continuity across devices. How they compose The natural fit:

  1. Agent mints ERC-8170 identity on its home chain (memory, credentials, lifecycle)
  2. Agent registers in ERC-8004 Identity Registry on Ethereum/L2s (discoverable to other agents)
  3. The 8004 agentURI points back to the ERC-8170 metadata
  4. Reputation accrues in 8004’s Reputation Registry as the agent operates
  5. Agent syncs memory state via ERC-8170’s updateMemory() independently

Discovery on the chains where users are. Depth on the home chain.
Key design alignment Both specs share important principles:

  • Payments are orthogonal — neither standard tries to own the payment layer
  • Multi-chain — both work as per-chain deployments (no bridges required)
  • ERC-721 based — both use NFTs for agent identity (composable with existing tooling)
  • Pluggable trust — 8004 offers reputation + validation hooks, 8170 is compatible with any verification standard

Deployed and running ERC-8170 is live on Pentagon Chain (ID: 3344) with a reference implementation built on OpenClaw (open-source agent framework). Agents are actively minting, syncing memory, and cloning.

Would love to hear thoughts on the composability model, especially around cross-chain agent discovery patterns.

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