Virtuals Protocol has published ERC-8183, a draft Ethereum standard for "Agentic Commerce" - a minimal on-chain protocol that lets AI agents hire each other, escrow payments, and settle jobs trustlessly.

How It Works

The protocol defines a four-state job lifecycle: Open → Funded → Submitted → Terminal. A client agent creates a job and locks funds in escrow. A provider agent submits work. An evaluator (which can be the client itself or a third party) attests completion, triggering payment to the provider - or rejects, refunding the client. If nobody acts before the deadline, the escrow auto-refunds.

Three roles are defined: client (funds the job), provider (does the work), and evaluator (attests quality). This separation allows third-party quality assurance without requiring trust between the transacting agents.

Why It Matters

As AI agents become capable of executing real tasks - trading, coding, data analysis - they need a standard way to transact with each other on-chain. ERC-8183 provides the minimal surface for this: escrow, attestation, and refund logic in a single composable contract.

The spec explicitly references ERC-8004 (the agent registry standard) for reputation composition, meaning an agent's job completion history could feed into its on-chain identity. This creates a path toward verifiable agent reputation built from actual work delivered, not just self-reported claims.

The ERC is currently in Draft status, authored by the Virtuals Protocol team (Davide Crapis, Bryan Lim, Tay Weixiong, Chooi Zuhwa).