Preview: "The new team will be led by Ethereum Foundation research scientist Davide Crapis and will support projects that seek to create an ecosystem for humans and AI."
The Ethereum Foundation announced a new AI-focused research team, aiming to blend the censorship-resistant power of blockchain with one of tech’s hottest fields.
Davide Crapis, a research scientist with the Foundation, said Monday that the new team will focus on developing an AI economy on Ethereum and a decentralized AI stack for developers.
“Ethereum makes AI more trustworthy, and AI makes Ethereum more useful,” Crapis said on X. “The more intelligent agents transact, the more they need a neutral base layer for value and reputation. Ethereum benefits by becoming that layer and AI benefits by escaping lock-in to a few centralized platforms.”
The Ethereum Foundation is staffing its newly created dAI team and is seeking an AI researcher and a project manager to drive coordination.
The team will continue work initially done on ERC-8004, a proposal authored by Crapis, Marco De Rossi and Jordan Ellis that would extend the AI agent-to-agent (A2A) protocol into a trust layer for discovering and interacting with AI agents.
The Foundation will support projects seeking to turn Ethereum into an ecosystem involving AI and humans, with Crapis leading the new team.
AI agents have become a focal point in integrating blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. They are programs that make decisions and operate with minimal human supervision, executing transactions and functioning on behalf of their programmers. Blockchains with programmable features, like smart contracts, have become havens for these programs.
AI can help manage settlements, the final step in a transaction in which assets are transferred between two parties. According to blockchain analytics company CryptoQuant, Ethereum daily smart contract calls reached 12 million on Thursday, reinforcing the blockchain’s role as a programmable settlement layer.
“Network activity is in expansion mode,” CryptoQuant said. “Ethereum’s total transactions and active addresses have reached record highs, highlighting expanding adoption across DeFi, stablecoin transfers, and token activity.”
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AI moves across blockchains
According to a tech researcher, blockchain technology can shore up the weaknesses of artificial intelligence by providing decentralization, immutability and identity verification, among other features.
Different Web3 organizations are working on blending the two technologies. In 2024, Matchain announced the launch of its decentralized AI blockchain, and in February 2025, KiteAI announced the debut of an AI-driven blockchain in the Avalanche ecosystem.
According to Arunkumar Krishnakumar, head of institutional growth and RWAs at Kamino Finance, AI agents and blockchain technology could redefine the digital economy.
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