Ethereum Foundation establishes dAI Team: a new starting point for the integration of AI and blockchain

Vitalik 2025-10-13 13:57 76847人围观 ETH

Protocol Finance - Founded in 2018 (This article only provides market analysis and does not constitute investment advice) The Ethereum Foundation recently announced the establishment of the dAI Team, which is a major step in its integration strategy of ar

Agreement Finance-Founded in 2018

(This article only provides market analysis and does not constitute investment advice)

The Ethereum Foundation recently announced the establishment of the dAI Team, which is a major step in its strategy of integrating artificial intelligence and blockchain. The establishment of the dAI Team is not only a technical layout, but also a centralized response to the global industrial environment, policy supervision and market trends in 2025.

Why now?

The global AI agent market is expected to reach US$40 billion by 2027, and a competition is underway among public blockchain chains for the right to speak in AI. Ethereum chose to launch dAI Team at this time because of several key backgrounds:

Regulatory drive: The EU AI Act will officially take effect in June 2025, strengthening restrictions on centralized AI systems, and the market is in urgent need of decentralized alternatives.
Competition intensifies: Cardano announced the Hydra upgrade in August, directly introducing AI elements with the intention of benchmarking Ethereum at the infrastructure level.
Market verification: The DeFi ecosystem has demonstrated the potential of AI scenarios. The stablecoin transaction volume reached US$300 billion in the third quarter of 2025. AI agents naturally require the payment and settlement capabilities of stablecoins.

The core of dAI Team: ERC-8004

At the heart of the dAI Team’s agenda is the ERC-8004 standard. This standard can be understood as the "communication and payment protocol layer of AI agents", and its significance is:

Undertake the results of the second-layer expansion of Ethereum: In 2024, the cumulative transaction volume of the second-layer Ethereum will exceed 1 trillion US dollars； ERC-8004 will provide AI with lower-cost, higher-frequency interaction capabilities on this basis.
Service machine economy: IDC reports show that global IoT device shipments will reach 14.4 billion units in 2024. These devices may need to have autonomous payment and interaction functions in the future, and ERC-8004 just provides a standardized interface.
Promoting real-time AI payments: Combining HTTP 402 and EIP-3009, ERC-8004 allows AI to directly complete small-amount, instant on-chain payments.

Strategic positioning: open, censorship-resistant and human-led

The design of dAI Team emphasizes three key words:

Openness: ERC-8004 aims to become a common protocol for the entire industry, rather than an exclusive tool for Ethereum. This also explains why Google engineer Jordan Ellis participated in the formulation of the standard.
Censorship resistance: Directly responds to the AI Act’s concerns about centralization risks and ensures that the AI stack is resilient in the context of global compliance.
Human dominance: Vitalik Buterin’s warning in September against relying entirely on native AI governance made the dAI Team emphasize more on the “assisted human” framework rather than transferring governance rights to AI.

Ecological effects and capital inflows

The dAI Team does not exist in isolation, but is part of the larger ecological strategy embedded in Ethereum:

Financial support: In March 2025, the Ethereum Foundation expanded its ecological support plan to US$100 million, with AI+blockchain being the key direction.
Ecological verification: UXLINK, which has 15 million users, has announced the adoption of ERC-8004 (CoinPush reported), showing that this standard has real market demand.
Capital attention: Crunchbase predicts that startups surrounding ERC-8004 are expected to attract $500 million in venture capital by the end of 2025.

Devconnect 2025 test

The real test of the dAI Team will be at Devconnect Bangkok in November 2025. Last year Devconnect attracted 8,000 developers, and this year ERC-8004 will be tested and demonstrated as a core topic. If it can be successfully implemented, it will be an important opportunity for Ethereum to establish a standard voice in the AI narrative.

Protocol Finance emphasizes that the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI Team is not a simple laboratory, but a comprehensive strategic deployment of Ethereum at four levels: technical standards, regulatory compliance, industrial cooperation and capital attraction:

ERC-8004 becomes the core protocol for machine economy and AI payment；
Censorship-resistant AI stack responds to global regulatory environment；
Ecological and financial support accelerate market implementation；
Devconnect 2025 will be a critical stage for standards to gain a foothold.

In the context of AI being "locked" by giants such as OpenAI, Ethereum is trying to provide an open, decentralized alternative through dAI Team. This is not only a technological innovation, but also a long-term competition about who will control the dominance of future AI infrastructure.

From @ agreement finance

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