Virtuals Protocol co-hosts first ERC-8183 builder session with Ethereum Foundation to standardize AI agent commerce

The new standard introduces a permissionless escrow system designed to let autonomous AI agents transact trustlessly on any EVM chain.

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Add us on Google by Editorial Team May. 28, 2026

If you want AI agents to do business with each other on-chain, they need rules of engagement. Virtuals Protocol and the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team are now writing those rules together, co-hosting the first builder session dedicated to ERC-8183, a proposed standard they’re calling “Agentic Commerce.”

The standard was officially submitted on February 25, 2026, and introduces a structured “Job” primitive with built-in escrow, designed specifically for autonomous agent-to-agent transactions.

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What ERC-8183 actually does

ERC-8183 defines a permissionless Job that moves through four distinct states: Open, Funded, Submitted, and Terminal. One agent posts a job, another picks it up, funds get locked in escrow, the work gets submitted, and an evaluator attestation system confirms whether the deliverable meets the brief before funds are released.

The standard was co-authored by Davide Crapis from the Ethereum Foundation’s dAI team alongside Bryan Lim, Tay Weixiong, and Chooi Zuhwa from Virtuals Protocol. It’s designed to integrate with existing protocols like ERC-8004 and x402. Any EVM-based chain can adopt this, and independent implementations have already started appearing on Base, the Abstract chain, and the Arc testnet within weeks of the standard’s introduction.

Why this matters now

Before ERC-8183, agent-to-agent commerce on-chain had no standardized escrow and no universal verification process. Virtuals Protocol reported more than $3 million in agent-to-agent transaction volume and over 20,000 operational agents prior to ERC-8183’s submission. The protocol has also generated $39.5 million in revenue from agent activities as of March 2026.

What this means for investors

The VIRTUAL token was trading at approximately $0.70 with a market cap near $457 million as of late March 2026. Those early implementations on Abstract chain and Arc testnet are encouraging signals, but the real test is whether major protocols and agent frameworks integrate ERC-8183 as a default rather than an option.

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