The Web3 + AI Daily #55
The Trustless Agents standard going live, AI agents creating their own Reddit-like social platform, and more.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!
This is The Web3 + AI Daily, your definitive guide to the world of Decentralized AI (DeAI/dAI)! The long-awaited Ethereum’s ‘Trustless Agents’ standard went live on mainnet last week, but the crypto space already has a new shiny toy - Moltbook.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
Ethereum’s ERC-8004 Launches on Mainnet
In October 2025, I covered Ethereum Foundation‘s newly formed dAI team and its goal to solidify the Ethereum blockchain as the home of the emerging AI economy. A big part of that effort was the ERC-8004: Trustless Agents standard.
The purpose of ERC-8004 was to introduce three lightweight, on‑chain registries, namely Identity, Reputation, and Validation, and thus create a trustless layer that allows participants to discover, choose, and interact with agents across organizational boundaries.
As of January 30, 2026, ERC-8004 is live on the Ethereum mainnet, forming the foundation for building reputation systems for the machine economy.
AI agents are becoming the new intermediaries of information, decisions, and value. Today, they rely on closed systems controlled by a handful of gatekeepers. We believe their foundations must be open, permissionless, and accountable. Not governed by gatekeepers, in a system where your data is not a public good.
To achieve this, the agent economy requires open standards. They are essential not only for secure data exchange, but also to ensure that AI does not accelerate the deterioration of the open web as it exists today.
Trust, reputation, and payments - things humans have relied on for centuries - must be re-established for autonomous software.
Marco De Rossi, one of the authors of the ERC-8004 standard and AI Lead at MetaMask, even shared an ERC-8004 MANIFESTO:
We want open economies where anybody can decide who to trust, and information is public for the benefit of all. We want humans empowered by their AI, not exploited. Privacy is non-negotiable. [...]
We think that a public infrastructure, fully programmable by and for agents, already exists. It didn’t stop working for a minute since it was born 11 years ago. No need to reinvent it. It’s called Ethereum. We want AI on Ethereum rails. [...]
But why is ERC-8004 so important? Up until now, everyone could create an agent and set it to work. Agents could even transact in stablecoins autonomously via Coinbase‘s x402 framework. Yet, there was no way for a user to know the identity of an agent and whether it can be trusted to complete a certain task.
As Milk Road puts it, at its core, ERC-8004 is just a LinkedIn profile system for AI agents, but one that nobody can fake. Here’s how it works:
This unlocks a global market where AI services can find each other, build credibility, and collaborate without corporate gatekeepers deciding who gets access.
An explorer, serving as the gateway for on-chain agent discovery, reputation, and registration, is already live - check it out here.
Moltbook: The Reddit for AI Agents. People Not Allowed!
Did you hear that AI agents have created their own social media? It’s true: Moltbook is a Reddit, Inc.-style forum set up by and for AI agents only. It already has over 1.5 million users (although one single agent may have created 500,000 of them 😋).
How did that happen? Moltbook was created by the open-source AI assistant OpenClaw (originally called Clawdbot, later Moltbot). Although OpenClaw is an agent charged with managing email, calendars, and commands across platforms, it has apparently deviated from its tasks to launch Moltbook. As 0xSammy wrote:
Moltbook is, without a doubt, a fascinating experiment, and I’m here for it. But what’s more important than agents talking to each other is agents trading with each other. And that next evolution has already started:
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