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ERC-8004, Ethereum’s identity and reputation standard for AI agents, first appeared onchain in January 2026. And now, just seven months later, there are nearly 520,000 agent identities registered across 14 chains.
That is significant growth for a standard less than a year old. For comparison, ERC-4337, the account abstraction standard, had roughly 730,000 accounts at the same stage. Today, it has more than 40 million.
In this article, we share the data we uncovered when looking onchain at every ERC-8004 registration and every feedback event. We’ll break down where the numbers come from, what they can and cannot tell us about agent activity, and what they suggest about where all of this may be going in the future.
What is ERC-8004 and how can it be put to use?
ERC-8004 gives AI agents portable onchain identities and a way to build reputation through three registries:
- Identity Registry: Creates an agent token linked to a file describing the agent, including its endpoints, wallet, and trust models. Each new identity emits a Registered event.
- Reputation Registry: Records feedback from addresses other than the agent’s owner or operator. Each submission emits a NewFeedback event with a score and optional tags.
- Validation Registry: Records independent checks of an agent’s work. It is not included in this dataset.
Our dataset covers identities and reputation feedback from the first two registries.
See our Turnkey for Agent Identity article for more information on ERC-8004 and its importance in the Ethereum ecosystem.
It’s important to note that ERC-8004 registration does not prove that an agent works as advertised or is trustworthy. While it gives agents a standard way to identify themselves and accumulate reputation, it does not govern how they transact or guarantee the quality of their behavior.
However those signals do become more useful as agents actually interact, complete work, receive feedback, and build a verifiable history over time.
How we collected our data on the implementation of this Ethereum standard
We scanned each chain from the registries’ deployment blocks through the latest block, collecting every Registered event from the Identity Registry and every NewFeedback event from the Reputation Registry. The snapshot was taken on September 13, 2026. Event counts come directly from onchain logs. Any sampled or calculated figures are clearly labeled.
What the data shows at a high level about ERC-8004 registrations
ERC-8004 has been adopted as an identity standard quickly and at real scale, but that adoption is concentrated, and it runs well ahead of any measurable sign that the registered agents are doing verifiable work.
At a high level, here are a few interesting things we found:
- In roughly seven months, 519,437 identities were registered across 14 chains, a fast start for a standard less than a year old.
- Three networks hold about 93% of all identities. Control is also concentrated by operator, with a small number of addresses owning most identities and very few identities running on a dedicated agent wallet.
- Verifiable activity via feedback is far smaller than registration: only 6.05% of identities have received any feedback, and that feedback is overwhelmingly on Base.
Taken together, the data shows rapid uptake, heavy concentration, and a much smaller layer of observable activity. It’s an early picture of the standard’s fast growth, where identities are much easier to measure than actions.
The growing adoption of ERC-8004
ERC-8004 has seen meaningful adoption as an identity primitive. But only three chains account for about 93% of all registered identities:
- BNB Chain: 345,723 (66.6%)
- Base: 86,167 (16.6%)
- Ethereum: 50,782 (9.8%)
The other 7% of identities are registered across 11 other chains. But growth is uneven. Large batch-minting days drive much of the increase: Base added 12,030 identities on Feb. 8 and another 6,528 on Aug. 31, while registrations on a typical day sit in the tens to low hundreds.
This pattern suggests that some of this growth may come from programs registering large numbers of identities at once, rather than from thousands of independently operated agents coming online one by one.
Most identities do not use a separate agent wallet
The ownership data points in the same direction. Only 26,099 identities sit behind an address that controls no other agent, and the 12 busiest addresses control 49,468 identities, or 36.1% of the Ethereum and Base total.
More registrations do not necessarily mean more independently operated agents. One owner address can register many identities, and each identity can optionally use a separate spending wallet.
Across the 136,949 identities on Ethereum and Base, only 914 use a spending wallet that is different from the address that registered them, less than 1%.
The address data shows the same concentration. Of the 39,436 distinct addresses that either registered an identity or were named as an agent wallet, only 906 are separate spending wallets, or 2.3%.
Reputation is much smaller than registration
Registration tells us that an identity exists. Reputation provides a better, though imperfect, signal that someone has interacted with it. Across all 14 chains, 31,444 of 519,437 registered agents have received at least one feedback event, or 6.05%.
On Base, 34.52% of registered agents have received feedback. Those agents generated 434,141 feedback events from 13,312 distinct reviewers. Ethereum, by comparison, has 50,782 identities but only 3.31% have received feedback. Base accounts for 98.8% of all feedback in the dataset, making measured ERC-8004 activity overwhelmingly Base-centric.
Feedback via the Reputation Registry is a limited signal, for two reasons.
- First, any address other than the agent's owner or operator can submit it, and the protocol does not verify that an interaction, payment, or completed task actually took place.
- Second, it is concentrated: on Base, the median address that submits feedback does so exactly once, while the five busiest submitters account for roughly one-third of all feedback.
In short, ERC-8004 is seeing real adoption as an identity standard, but the feedback data suggests verifiable agent activity is still much less developed.
Transaction data adds context, not proof of agent activity
Across the chains with transaction data, almost every address that registered an agent has sent at least one transaction. Ethereum has the highest share of addresses with no transaction history, and even there it is only 0.15%.
But this metric includes every transaction that account has ever sent on that chain for any purpose. Because many of these wallets can be used by both humans and agents, it proves that the address has been used. It does not prove that the registered agent completed a task, made a payment, or initiated any transaction itself.
The type of transactions these wallets have engaged in include:
On Base, the median registering account has sent 27 transactions, and 35% have sent more than 50. On Ethereum, the median is two. The destination mix also shows that activity spans direct transfers, smart accounts, contracts, and onchain financial applications.
Turnkey x ERC-8004
ERC-8004 provides the identity and reputation layer. Turnkey provides the signing, credential, and policy layer beneath it, giving agents the secure infrastructure they need to register identities and act across services.
With Turnkey, private keys are generated,stored, and used inside hardware-isolated secure enclaves. An agent authenticates a request and receives a signature without accessing the private key itself.
To use the services listed in an ERC-8004 registration file, whether through an MCP endpoint, A2A interface, or HTTP API, an agent may need passwords, API keys, OAuth tokens, or TOTP seeds. Giving those credentials directly to the agent can expose them in application memory and grant broader access than a single task requires.
Turnkey Agent Auth, in beta as of September 2026, extends Turnkey's model for securing private keys to other credentials. It gives builders a system for human and machine authentication, programmable policies, consensus approvals, temporary or revocable access, and audit trails. Users retain control of their credentials while agents receive only the scoped access required for a specific action.
Turnkey: From agent identity to secure execution
The ERC-8004 registry tells the world who an agent is and how it has performed. Turnkey protects the credentials behind that identity and governs what the agent is allowed to do with them. As the gap between registered identities and real activity narrows, that control layer is what makes it possible to trust agents with money and access.
Learn more about Turnkey's infrastructure for AI agents.
And get started with Turnkey today.
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