Morning Edition · Tuesday, June 30, 2026
The on-chain agent economy starts to take shape, and so do its risks
New research on Ethereum's ERC-8004 trust layer, a new AI-agent marketplace, and a paper on covert agent collusion together outline an emerging machine-to-machine economy.
A set of developments over the past day points to the same emerging idea, autonomous software agents that hold wallets, transact with each other, and build reputation on-chain. The question is whether the infrastructure for this is real yet…
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The On-Chain Agent Economy Takes Shape
Autonomous agents that hold wallets and transact on-chain will keep accumulating infrastructure, but trust, identity, and oversight will lag the marketing, making verifiable agent identity the contested layer of the emerging machine economy.
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