Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On March 10, the dAI team, under the Ethereum Foundation and focused on advancing the deep integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, jointly launched a new standard, ERC-8183, with Virtuals Protocol.
Davide Crapis, Head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, stated that ERC-8183 is one of the missing components for the open agent economy being built by the Ethereum community, and that this standard can be used in conjunction with x402 and ERC-8004 to serve as infrastructure for secure interactions between agents. The dAI team will support the adoption of ERC-8183 and is committed to making it a neutral standard.
What does ERC-8183 aim to solve?
According to the introductory article published by Virtuals Protocol, ERC-8183 is designed specifically for commercial transactions between AI Agents, defining a set of on-chain rules that enable two mutually distrustful Agents to complete commercial workflows such as "hire-deliver-pay" without relying on centralized platforms.
The core problem ERC-8183 seeks to solve is how to complete transactions between agents when they hire and collaborate with each other, without a platform, without legal oversight, and without human arbitration.
For example, suppose Agent A, focused on marketing promotion, wants to hire Agent B, specialized in image generation, to create a batch of promotional posters. This creates a business trust issue—since both parties are unfamiliar with each other and lack a foundation of trust, when should payment occur? If A pays first, B might refuse to work or deliver substandard results; if B works first, A might refuse to pay.
In the traditional internet world, users and merchants also face similar commercial trust issues, and platforms play a crucial intermediary role—holding A’s funds, determining whether B has completed the service, and ultimately releasing payment. Platforms like Taobao, JD.com, Meituan, and Didi are essentially this type of intermediary platform.
The Ethereum Foundation and Virtuals Protocol aim to abstract the platform’s functions into an on-chain protocol via ERC-8183, enabling execution through smart contracts and assuming a decentralized intermediary role in the Agent economy.
ERC-8183 Work Plan Breakdown
The operation mechanism of ERC-8183 is not complex; this standard introduces a new concept called Job (which you can understand as a "task"). Each Job can be viewed as a complete business transaction, involving three distinct roles:
- Client: "Client," simply put, is the Agent that posts various tasks;
- Provider: "Service Provider," the Agent responsible for completing the task;
- Evaluator: "Evaluator," the most unique role, responsible for determining whether the task has been completed.
Here, it is important to emphasize the Evaluator—the introduction of this role is the core design of ERC-8183. Under this standard, the Evaluator is defined solely as an on-chain address (address), but from a broader perspective, this address can correspond to various different execution forms.
- For subjective tasks such as writing, design, or analysis, the Evaluator can be an AI Agent that reads the submitted result, compares it against the original task requirements, and makes a judgment;
- For deterministic tasks such as computation, proof generation, or data transformation, the Evaluator can be a smart contract encapsulating a zero-knowledge verifier (ZK verifier). The Provider submits a proof, and the Evaluator verifies it on-chain, automatically calling either "complete" or "reject" to finalize or reject the task;
- In high-value or high-risk task scenarios, the Evaluator can also be a multisig wallet, a DAO, or a validation cluster supported by a staking mechanism.
ERC-8183 does not distinguish between these different forms. The protocol layer cares only about one thing—whether an address calls "complete" or "reject"; whether that address is powered by an LLM-driven AI agent or a ZK circuit is outside the scope of what the protocol needs to concern itself with.
Returning to Job, each Job’s lifecycle consists of four states, corresponding to different stages in the operation of ERC-8183.
- Open: The client will create a job, post tasks, and specify requirements during this cycle;
- Funded: The client will transfer the commission to a smart contract escrow address rather than directly to the Provider;
- Submitted: The provider has completed the work and submitted proof;
- Terminal (Completed / Rejected / Expired): The Evaluator reviews the task and determines whether it is completed (Completed) or rejected based on the review outcome, then transfers funds to either the Client or the Provider accordingly; if no response or completion is received from the Provider within the specified time frame, the funds are refunded to the Client.
In addition to the standard process above, ERC-8183 can support additional derived functionalities through modular extension features called Hooks, which address complex real-world business use cases. Hooks are optional smart contracts attached when a Job is created, enabling custom logic to be executed before and after various stages of the Job’s lifecycle, such as reputation thresholds, bidding mechanisms, fee distribution, or other special requirements.
How is ERC-8183 different from x402 and ERC-8004?
From x402 to ERC-8004, and now to ERC-8183, readers unfamiliar with the topic might be confused, wondering why a new standard keeps emerging. In reality, these three represent three distinct stages within the AI Agent economic system, each addressing different challenges.
x402 is an HTTP payment protocol designed to enable AI agents to make payments directly, as if calling an API; ERC-8004 is an identity and reputation standard for AI agents, addressing how to determine whether an agent is trustworthy; ERC-8183 focuses on commercial transactions, aiming to solve the challenge of enabling two distrustful agents to complete a transaction.
In one sentence, x402 handles "how to pay," ERC-8004 identifies "who the other party is and whether they're trustworthy," and ERC-8183 manages "how to transact with confidence."
The three are not in competition but are complementary, together aiming toward the same goal — building a decentralized, self-sustaining AI Agent economy.