Ethereum Foundation Launches AI Team to Support Agentic Payments

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is creating a dedicated artificial quality (AI) radical to marque Ethereum the colony and coordination furniture for what it calls the “machine economy,” according to probe idiosyncratic Davide Crapis.

Crapis, who announced the inaugural Monday connected X, said the caller dAI Team volition prosecute 2 priorities: enabling AI agents to wage and coordinate without intermediaries, and gathering a decentralized AI stack that avoids reliance connected a tiny fig of ample companies. He said Ethereum’s neutrality, verifiability and censorship absorption marque it a earthy basal furniture for intelligent systems.

Ethereum Foundation Background

The EF is simply a non-profit enactment based successful Zug, Switzerland, that funds and coordinates improvement of the Ethereum blockchain. It does not power the web but plays a catalytic relation by supporting researchers, developers and ecosystem projects.

Its remit includes backing upgrades specified arsenic Ethereum 2.0, zero-knowledge proofs and layer-2 scaling, alongside assemblage programs similar the Ecosystem Support Program. The instauration besides organizes events specified arsenic Devcon to foster collaboration and acts arsenic a argumentation advocator for blockchain adoption.

In 2025, EF restructured to grip Ethereum’s growth, emphasizing ecosystem acceleration, laminitis enactment and endeavor outreach. The caller dAI Team represents a continuation of this displacement toward specialized units addressing emerging technologies.

Crapis’s Role

Crapis is simply a probe idiosyncratic astatine the EF and volition pb the caller dAI Team. He said the radical volition link its enactment with some the EF’s protocol radical and its ecosystem enactment arm. “Ethereum makes AI much trustworthy, and AI makes Ethereum much useful,” helium wrote, adding that the squad intends to money nationalist goods and projects astatine the intersection of AI and blockchains.

ERC-8004 and Trust Standards

The radical volition physique connected caller enactment astir ERC-8004, a projected Ethereum modular that Crapis described arsenic a mode to beryllium who an AI cause is and whether it tin beryllium trusted. By offering individuality and estimation systems for autonomous agents, the modular is intended to let coordination without centralized gatekeepers.

Crapis said the squad volition enactment caller standards and upgrades arsenic they emerge, guided by Ethereum’s values and the “d/acc” doctrine of decentralized acceleration. The goal, helium explained, is to guarantee AI improvement remains unfastened and verifiable portion giving humans greater bureau implicit however intelligent systems interact with the economy.

Why It Matters

For Ethereum, the determination signals a increasing ambition to anchor emerging technologies beyond finance. If AI agents statesman transacting astatine scale, request could turn for colony rails, estimation systems and standards that tally natively connected Ethereum. For the AI community, the inaugural offers an alternate to centralized platforms that presently predominate AI infrastructure.

“The much intelligent agents transact, the much they request a neutral basal furniture for worth and reputation,” Crapis said. “Ethereum benefits by becoming that furniture and AI benefits by escaping lock-in to a fewer centralized platforms.”

The squad has begun hiring and publishing resources, according to Crapis. He said EF intends to enactment “with intent and urgency” to link AI developers with the Ethereum ecosystem and to accelerate probe astatine the bound of the 2 fields.