Ethereum is positioning its base layer to coordinate autonomous agents, a move that puts machine, to machine commerce on a direct path to on-chain settlement in the coming year.

This month, the Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated dAI Team with a remit to advance agent identity, trust, and payments, including support for ERC-8004, a draft standard for agent credentials and verification that would anchor identity and attestations at the protocol level.

The initiative frames Ethereum as a settlement and coordination layer for agent economies, with censorship resistance and open access as core design goals, while community drafts around ERC-8004 outline how on-chain identity and trust could allow automated systems to negotiate, post bonds, and execute escrow without custodial intermediaries.

The near-term deliverable is research and standards progress that can be adopted by wallets, middleware, and dApps in 2026, creating a shared trust substrate for agentic applications.

Token flows already reflect an AI tilt in crypto markets.

AI-focused tokens such as Bittensor, Fetch.ai (ASI), Internet Computer, and Render have maintained on-chain activity and relative price stability through Q3, outpacing broader altcoins during the recent market drawdown.

Koinly’s market roundups point to continued demand for decentralized compute, inference, and agent frameworks, while ecosystem reports show ICP’s push for native app hosting and Render’s GPU marketplace drawing steady usage from AI workloads.

Per Token Metrics, DeFi total value locked has rebounded from roughly $72 billion in early 2025 toward the $100 billion area, with new AI-native DeFi rails such as Blackhole DEX on Avalanche, Sahara AI, and Moby AI contributing to volumes and fee generation that persisted through volatility. Token Metrics places this

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Author: Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright