What Ethereum's agent identity standard deliberately leaves open.

Here's what Ethereum’s agent identity standard actually solves, what it deliberately leaves open, and why that matters for anyone building trust infrastructure. ERC-8004 launched on mainnet on January 29, 2026. 40K+ agents landed on Base in under two weeks. Audited by Cyfrin and Nethermind. It's solid work, but there's a gap between what developers assume it does and what contracts actually execute. What ERC-8004 solves: Infrastructure Primitives ERC-8004 is a set of three on-chain registries. It’s a library of storage primitives, not a decision engine: IdentityRegistry: Mints ERC-721 NFT per agent. Provides on-chain proof of existence. ReputationRegistry: Stores raw feedback signals. Anyone can call giveFeedback(). ValidationRegistry: Independent pass/fail responses for specific capabilities. This is the right design for a base-layer standard: do one thing (storage), do it on-chain, and let ecosystem handle logic. 8 Gaps (Deliberate by Design) If you're building on ERC-8004, realize w