The Ethereum Foundation officially establishes an artificial intelligence team to promote proxy payments and decentralized AI infrastructure.
Recently, the Ethereum Foundation announced the establishment of a brand new artificial intelligence team called dAI, aimed at making artificial intelligence and machine economy the preferred settlement and coordination layer for ETH, and building a decentralized AI economic infrastructure.
It is reported that the dAI team will focus on two key areas: first, enabling AI agents and robots to make payments, coordinate, and govern without intermediaries; second, creating open, verifiable, and censorship-resistant alternatives to prevent the future of artificial intelligence from being controlled by a few centralized entities.
On the technical level, the dAI team is accelerating the advancement of the ERC-8004 proposal standard, which aims to establish a verification framework for AI agents to support their on-chain interactions using technologies like zero-knowledge proofs, addressing the identity trust issue. Meanwhile, the team also plans to collaborate with the Ethereum protocol layer to fund the development of infrastructure services such as AI agent-specific wallets and oracles.
In terms of ecology, the team plans to collaborate with Silicon Valley tech giants and cryptocurrency developers to transform Ethereum into the settlement layer for the AI economy. AI agents can automatically complete payments and settlements through smart contracts, reducing transaction costs and promoting the restructuring of the global value transfer network.
Currently, the team has initiated recruitment, opening positions for artificial intelligence researchers and project managers, following the philosophy of 'decentralized accelerationism,' and funding projects like federated learning frameworks, aiming to break the control of AI resources by giants.
The market has responded positively, with a net inflow of $1.1 billion into Ethereum investment products from September 9 to 15, ending a previous six-day streak of net outflows. If the ERC-8004 standard is implemented, Ethereum may gain an advantage in the field of AI agent payments.
However, the dAI team also faces challenges, such as the immaturity of the decentralized AI technology stack, difficulties in standard promotion, and regulatory uncertainties. It is expected that the team will adopt 'incremental innovation,' starting with pilot projects in scenarios like DeFi, and then gradually expanding.
Additionally, the upcoming ETHShanghai 2025 conference, to be held from October 18 to 22, will gather excellent developers and teams, potentially becoming an important opportunity for the team to showcase project progress and recruit partners.
