The Ethereum Foundation is establishing a dedicated 'dAI team' to position Ethereum as a central platform for AI development, emphasizing decentralization, verifiability, and democratization of AI technologies.

Research scientist Davide Crapis highlighted that the team aims to enable AI agents to pay and coordinate directly on Ethereum without intermediaries, fostering autonomous transactions and strengthening Ethereum's role in the AI economy.

The initiative focuses on developing standards like ERC-8004 to support AI agents in discovering, verifying, and transacting with each other, with plans to finalize this standard at the upcoming November Devconnect conference.

AI agents, which operate with minimal human oversight to make decisions and execute transactions, are central to this integration, with smart contracts facilitating these autonomous activities.

Blockchain's decentralization, immutability, and identity verification can address AI's weaknesses, enhancing trustworthiness and security in AI applications.

This movement is part of a broader surge in AI-related blockchain projects, including tokenized AI marketplaces and autonomous trading bots, which use blockchain as infrastructure for machine-to-machine coordination.

Experts believe that combining AI and blockchain could reshape the digital economy by creating new opportunities for innovation, trust, and secure digital transactions.

Ethereum's activity continues to grow, with over 12 million daily smart contract calls, indicating a robust network that supports AI-driven applications and decentralized projects.

Positioning Ethereum as a leader in decentralized AI could be transformative, but experts caution about potential risks like manipulation and security vulnerabilities, urging safeguards.

Ethereum's neutrality, censorship resistance, and verifiability make it an ideal platform for AI reputation systems, identity verification, and secure value exchanges, supporting the next phase of intelligent systems.

While other projects like Matchain and KiteAI are working on decentralized AI blockchains, Ethereum's approach emphasizes standards and infrastructure to support AI integration within its existing ecosystem.

The Ethereum Foundation's restructuring in 2025 created specialized units like the dAI team to focus on emerging technologies, including AI, moving beyond previous focuses on layer-2 scaling and zero-knowledge proofs.