While the price of ETH faces pressures so far this year, one narrative defines the current landscape of Ethereum: a strategic vision. The Ethereum Foundation’s (EF) bet in the face of the advance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not to compete with giants like OpenAI or Google in creating more powerful models. The goal is radically different: to turn Ethereum into the neutral infrastructure on which autonomous agents operate, managing payments, identity, and reputation in a decentralized environment.
The current debate is not about who develops the most capable AI, but about who defines the rules of the environment where that intelligence will act.
During his intervention at NEARCON 2026, Davide Crapis, head of AI at the Ethereum Foundation, placed this strategy in both a technical and philosophical context. As AI transforms critical sectors like finance and cybersecurity, the EF proposes that the network act as a coordination and verification layer in a world mediated by algorithms.
Crapis’s central concern is the risk of a silent recentralization of power. If digital activities (from transaction execution to software development) fall under the control of closed entities, the pillars of autonomy and censorship resistance could disappear.
«If AI does not possess the properties that matter to us (autonomy, censorship resistance, privacy) and then we use AI for everything, basically no one will have those properties anymore,» Crapis stated during the event.
Indeed, the Ethereum Foundation’s push seeks to ensure that, even if AI becomes the main interface of the Internet, user sovereignty and decentralization remain the foundation of the system.
What is the Ethereum Foundation, and what is it proposing?
To understand Ethereum’s move in the AI field, one must first understand what the Ethereum Foundation is. Based in Zug, Switzerland, it is a non-profit organization that does not dream of being the next Google. Its mission is not to control the network, but to drive its development, establish standards, and coordinate a global community of researchers and developers.
|
Category |
Concept / Initiative |
Description and Purpose |
| Mission and Vision | Organic Evolution | Facilitate the growth of the ecosystem without dictating its trajectory. Seeks to create transparent, trustless, and decentralized systems. |
| Strategic Role | Neutral Infrastructure | Act as a support and education component, fostering global collaboration rather than exercising centralized control. |
| Technical Action | Support Program (ESP) | Provides financial and technical support (financial and non-financial) to projects that accelerate network growth. |
| Community | Devcon | The annual meeting point since 2014 for developers and thinkers; the main repository of community knowledge. |
| Inclusion | Fellowship Program | Initiative to close representation gaps (class, culture, and nationality), supporting the future architects of Web3. |
Unlike traditional corporations, the EF operates under a principle of subtraction: its ultimate goal is to become unnecessary over time, allowing the protocol to be robust enough to function autonomously.
AI vs. Infrastructure
The EF’s concrete proposal regarding AI marks a clear dividing line: Ethereum does not want to run AI models, it wants to govern the environment where AI operates.
While OpenAI or Google focus on the power of the artificial «brain», the Ethereum Foundation focuses on the coordination and verification layer. In an Internet mediated by autonomous agents, Ethereum provides three pillars:
- Identity:Systems to verify that an agent is who it claims to be without revealing private data.
- Reputation:An immutable history of actions that allows trusting an AI before interacting with it.
- Payments:The financial infrastructure for machines to exchange value instantly and without permission.
In its most recent mandate, the EF reaffirmed that its two main objectives are absolute decentralization and that users always maintain the «final say» over their assets and data. This philosophy is what Davide Crapis defends: if AI becomes the interface for everything, but is controlled by a few, the user loses that decision-making power that Ethereum promised to return to them.
The risk no one names: Who controls the AI’s controls?
For Davide Crapis, the integration of AI into our digital life is not just an advance in efficiency, it is a political regime change on the Internet. If AI becomes the primary interface between humans and the network, and that interface is owned by a set of corporations, power recentralizes in a nearly invisible but absolute way.
Ethereum’s proposal, therefore, is not a technical computing solution, but rather a structural and political response. It is not about who builds the fastest «brain», but about who sets the rules of the world where that brain inhabits.
Crapis details that the Ethereum Foundation’s roadmap unfolds in two critical directions seeking to avoid the erosion of privacy and freedom:
- Decentralized coordination:Ethereum provides the infrastructure for autonomous agents to interact without intermediaries. Through standards like ERC-8004, agents can:
- Validate identity and reputation:Know if an AI is trustworthy based on its on-chain history.
- Native payments:Allow machines to transact with each other through public records, without relying on traditional banks.
- Local AI and privacy:Faced with the «centralized cloud» model where your data feeds a third party’s model, the EF promotes that AI processing occurs locally on users’ devices. This allows AI to learn from you without you losing control over your identity.
What is ERC-8004, and why is it the key piece?
If Ethereum is the infrastructure, ERC-8004 is the common language that allows artificial intelligences to communicate with each other.
ERC-8004 is now live on mainnet.
5 months ago, we wrote the specs for the Trustless Agents standard.
Since then, over 10k agents registered on testnet.
Today, we’re releasing it on Ethereum Mainnet.
Welcome to the 8004 Genesis Month.
Here’s everything you need to know 👇 pic.twitter.com/R8gf2tCqII
— Davide Crapis (@DavideCrapis) January 29, 2026
Until now, AI systems depended on private permissions (Google or OpenAI API) to operate. With ERC-8004, any autonomous agent can register on the blockchain to identify itself, build a reputation based on its previous successes, and make payments to other agents instantly, without the need for human intervention or prior trust between the parties.
Active on Ethereum’s mainnet since January 2026, this standard is not an isolated experiment. Its development has involved strategic collaboration with giants like MetaMask, Google, and Coinbase, ensuring that the tools we already use today are prepared for this new Internet of agents.
ERC-8004 is going live on mainnet soon.
By enabling discovery and portable reputation, ERC-8004 allows AI agents to interact across organizations ensuring credibility travels everywhere.
This unlocks a global market where AI services can interoperate without gatekeepers. https://t.co/Yrl0rvnSxj
— Ethereum (@ethereum) January 27, 2026
In fact, ERC-8004 replaces closed silos with three public records on the blockchain:
- Portable identity:An AI agent created on one platform can be recognized and operate on any other application within the Ethereum ecosystem.
- Verifiable reputation: Instead of «taking the word» of a bot, any entity can verify on the blockchain whether that agent has successfully completed its previous tasks.
- Frictionless payments: Ethereum becomes the settlement layer where machines pay each other for services autonomously.
In short, thanks to ERC-8004, Ethereum stops being just a network for «cryptocurrencies» and transforms into the global trust layer where machines can collaborate, automate services, and deliver results without depending on a central entity that gives them permission to exist.
The dAI team and the Foundation’s new strategic front
Now, the Ethereum Foundation has formalized the creation of the dAI (Decentralized AI) team, a specialized group led by Davide Crapis that has a clear mission: to turn Ethereum into the settlement and coordination layer of what is already called the “economy of machines.”
Although AI is not the Foundation’s only priority, this team has become one of its most relevant strategic fronts for 2026. Based on the ERC-8004 standard, the dAI team works on two critical fronts:
- Financial autonomy:Allowing AI agents to pay for services and coordinate with each other without human or banking intermediaries.
- Technological sovereignty:Building a decentralized AI infrastructure that avoids dependence on a small number of tech giants.
To conclude, the Ethereum Foundation has no interest in winning the language model race. Its bet is deeper, quieter, and possibly more powerful: to occupy the least visible but most vital place in the system. Ethereum does not want to be the brain that thinks, but the solid ground on which that brain walks.
If artificial intelligence is going to increasingly mediate our relationship with the world, someone has to set the rules of that game. Ethereum’s bet is that “someone” is not a single company, but a neutral protocol that no one can shut down.
