Key Takeaways:
- Ethereum Foundation has launched a decentralized AI (dAI) team to integrate blockchain with AI, focusing on autonomous AI agents and decentralized infrastructure.
- The initiative builds on ERC-8004 and aims to create a trust layer for AI agent-to-agent interactions using Ethereum’s infrastructure.
- Increased smart contract activity on Ethereum and rising Web3 interest in AI suggest growing momentum for AI-blockchain convergence.
The Ethereum Foundation has launched a new research initiative focused on artificial intelligence (AI), aiming to position Ethereum as a foundational platform for AI agents and machine-based economies.
The newly formed decentralized AI (dAI) team, led by research scientist Davide Crapis, will work on integrating blockchain technology with AI to create open, verifiable, and censorship-resistant systems.
We’re starting a new AI Team at the Ethereum Foundation (the dAI Team).
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) September 15, 2025
Our mission: make Ethereum the preferred settlement and coordination layer for AIs and the machine economy.
The team will focus on two main areas:
– AI Economy on Ethereum = giving AI agents and robots ways… pic.twitter.com/9sWVS4dp0K
The initiative will prioritize two areas: building an AI Economy on Ethereum, empowering autonomous agents and robots to make payments, coordinate, and operate without intermediaries; and developing a Decentralized AI Stack, ensuring AI remains accessible and decentralized rather than controlled by a few centralized entities.
Crapis noted the mutual benefits, stating: “Ethereum makes AI more trustworthy, and AI makes Ethereum more useful.”
The dAI team will expand on earlier work such as ERC-8004, a proposed standard for agent-to-agent (A2A) communication that could serve as a trust layer for discovering and interacting with autonomous agents.
To strengthen the effort, the Foundation is hiring an AI researcher and a project manager and will collaborate with its Protocol and Ecosystem teams.
With Ethereum recording 12 million smart contract calls in a single day, network demand continues to grow, reinforcing the view that AI-blockchain integration could play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the digital economy.