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Nillion's Blacklight Goes Live: How ERC-8004 is Building the Trust Layer for Autonomous AI Agents

· 12 min read
Dora Noda
Dora Noda
Software Engineer

On February 2, 2026, the AI agent economy took a critical step forward. Nillion launched Blacklight, a verification layer implementing the ERC-8004 standard to solve one of blockchain's most pressing questions: how do you trust an AI agent you've never met?

The answer isn't a simple reputation score or a centralized registry. It's a five-step verification process backed by cryptographic proofs, programmable audits, and a network of community-operated nodes. As autonomous agents increasingly execute trades, manage treasuries, and coordinate cross-chain activities, Blacklight represents the infrastructure enabling trustless AI coordination at scale.

The Trust Problem AI Agents Can't Solve Alone​

The numbers tell the story. AI agents now contribute 30% of Polymarket's trading volume, handle DeFi yield strategies across multiple protocols, and autonomously execute complex workflows. But there's a fundamental bottleneck: how do agents verify each other's trustworthiness without pre-existing relationships?

Traditional systems rely on centralized authorities issuing credentials. Web3's promise is different—trustless verification through cryptography and consensus. Yet until ERC-8004, there was no standardized way for agents to prove their authenticity, track their behavior, or validate their decision-making logic on-chain.

This isn't just a theoretical problem. As Davide Crapis explains, "ERC-8004 enables decentralized AI agent interactions, establishes trustless commerce, and enhances reputation systems on Ethereum." Without it, agent-to-agent commerce remains confined to walled gardens or requires manual oversight—defeating the purpose of autonomy.

ERC-8004: The Three-Registry Trust Infrastructure​

The ERC-8004 standard, which went live on Ethereum mainnet on January 29, 2026, establishes a modular trust layer through three on-chain registries:

Identity Registry: Uses ERC-721 to provide portable agent identifiers. Each agent receives a non-fungible token representing its unique on-chain identity, enabling cross-platform recognition and preventing identity spoofing.

Reputation Registry: Collects standardized feedback and ratings. Unlike centralized review systems, feedback is recorded on-chain with cryptographic signatures, creating an immutable audit trail. Anyone can crawl this history and build custom reputation algorithms.

Validation Registry: Supports cryptographic and economic verification of agent work. This is where programmable audits happen—validators can re-execute computations, verify zero-knowledge proofs, or leverage Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to confirm an agent acted correctly.

The brilliance of ERC-8004 is its unopinionated design. As the technical specification notes, the standard supports various validation techniques: "stake-secured re-execution of tasks (inspired by systems like EigenLayer), verification of zero-knowledge machine learning (zkML) proofs, and attestations from Trusted Execution Environments."

This flexibility matters. A DeFi arbitrage agent might use zkML proofs to verify its trading logic without revealing alpha. A supply chain agent might use TEE attestations to prove it accessed real-world data correctly. A cross-chain bridge agent might rely on crypto-economic validation with slashing to ensure honest execution.

Blacklight's Five-Step Verification Process​

Nillion's implementation of ERC-8004 on Blacklight adds a crucial layer: community-operated verification nodes. Here's how the process works:

1. Agent Registration: An agent registers its identity in the Identity Registry, receiving an ERC-721 NFT. This creates a unique on-chain identifier tied to the agent's public key.

2. Verification Request Initiation: When an agent performs an action requiring validation (e.g., executing a trade, transferring funds, or updating state), it submits a verification request to Blacklight.

3. Committee Assignment: Blacklight's protocol randomly assigns a committee of verification nodes to audit the request. These nodes are operated by community members who stake 70,000 NIL tokens, aligning incentives for network integrity.

4. Node Checks: Committee members re-execute the computation or validate cryptographic proofs. If validators detect incorrect behavior, they can slash the agent's stake (in systems using crypto-economic validation) or flag the identity in the Reputation Registry.

5. On-Chain Reporting: Results are posted on-chain. The Validation Registry records whether the agent's work was verified, creating permanent proof of execution. The Reputation Registry updates accordingly.

This process happens asynchronously and non-blocking, meaning agents don't wait for verification to complete routine tasks—but high-stakes actions (large transfers, cross-chain operations) can require upfront validation.

Programmable Audits: Beyond Binary Trust​

Blacklight's most ambitious feature is "programmable verification"—the ability to audit how an agent makes decisions, not just what it does.

Consider a DeFi agent managing a treasury. Traditional audits verify that funds moved correctly. Programmable audits verify:

  • Decision-making logic consistency: Did the agent follow its stated investment strategy, or did it deviate?
  • Multi-step workflow execution: If the agent was supposed to rebalance portfolios across three chains, did it complete all steps?
  • Security constraints: Did the agent respect gas limits, slippage tolerances, and exposure caps?

This is possible because ERC-8004's Validation Registry supports arbitrary proof systems. An agent can commit to a decision-making algorithm on-chain (e.g., a hash of its neural network weights or a zk-SNARK circuit representing its logic), then prove each action conforms to that algorithm without revealing proprietary details.

Nillion's roadmap explicitly targets these use cases: "Nillion plans to expand Blacklight's capabilities to 'programmable verification,' enabling decentralized audits of complex behaviors such as agent decision-making logic consistency, multi-step workflow execution, and security constraints."

This shifts verification from reactive (catching errors after the fact) to proactive (enforcing correct behavior by design).

Blind Computation: Privacy Meets Verification​

Nillion's underlying technology—Nil Message Compute (NMC)—adds a privacy dimension to agent verification. Unlike traditional blockchains where all data is public, Nillion's "blind computation" enables operations on encrypted data without decryption.

Here's why this matters for agents: an AI agent might need to verify its trading strategy without revealing alpha to competitors. Or prove it accessed confidential medical records correctly without exposing patient data. Or demonstrate compliance with regulatory constraints without disclosing proprietary business logic.

Nillion's NMC achieves this through multi-party computation (MPC), where nodes collaboratively generate "blinding factors"—correlated randomness used to encrypt data. As DAIC Capital explains, "Nodes generate the key network resource needed to process data—a type of correlated randomness referred to as a blinding factor—with each node storing its share of the blinding factor securely, distributing trust across the network in a quantum-safe way."

This architecture is quantum-resistant by design. Even if a quantum computer breaks today's elliptic curve cryptography, distributed blinding factors remain secure because no single node possesses enough information to decrypt data.

For AI agents, this means verification doesn't require sacrificing confidentiality. An agent can prove it executed a task correctly while keeping its methods, data sources, and decision-making logic private.

The $4.3 Billion Agent Economy Infrastructure Play​

Blacklight's launch comes as the blockchain-AI sector enters hypergrowth. The market is projected to grow from $680 million (2025) to $4.3 billion (2034) at a 22.9% CAGR, while the broader confidential computing market reaches $350 billion by 2032.

But Nillion isn't just betting on market expansion—it's positioning itself as critical infrastructure. The agent economy's bottleneck isn't compute or storage; it's trust at scale. As KuCoin's 2026 outlook notes, three key trends are reshaping AI identity and value flow:

Agent-Wrapping-Agent systems: Agents coordinating with other agents to execute complex multi-step tasks. This requires standardized identity and verification—exactly what ERC-8004 provides.

KYA (Know Your Agent): Financial infrastructure demanding agent credentials. Regulators won't approve autonomous agents managing funds without proof of correct behavior. Blacklight's programmable audits directly address this.

Nano-payments: Agents need to settle micropayments efficiently. The x402 payment protocol, which processed over 20 million transactions in January 2026, complements ERC-8004 by handling settlement while Blacklight handles trust.

Together, these standards reached production readiness within weeks of each other—a coordination breakthrough signaling infrastructure maturation.

Ethereum's Agent-First Future​

ERC-8004's adoption extends far beyond Nillion. As of early 2026, multiple projects have integrated the standard:

  • Oasis Network: Implementing ERC-8004 for confidential computing with TEE-based validation
  • The Graph: Supporting ERC-8004 and x402 to enable verifiable agent interactions in decentralized indexing
  • MetaMask: Exploring agent wallets with built-in ERC-8004 identity
  • Coinbase: Integrating ERC-8004 for institutional agent custody solutions

This rapid adoption reflects a broader shift in Ethereum's roadmap. Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly emphasized that blockchain's role is becoming "just the plumbing" for AI agents—not the consumer-facing layer, but the trust infrastructure enabling autonomous coordination.

Nillion's Blacklight accelerates this vision by making verification programmable, privacy-preserving, and decentralized. Instead of relying on centralized oracles or human reviewers, agents can prove their correctness cryptographically.

What Comes Next: Mainnet Integration and Ecosystem Expansion​

Nillion's 2026 roadmap prioritizes Ethereum compatibility and sustainable decentralization. The Ethereum bridge went live in February 2026, followed by native smart contracts for staking and private computation.

Community members staking 70,000 NIL tokens can operate Blacklight verification nodes, earning rewards while maintaining network integrity. This design mirrors Ethereum's validator economics but adds a verification-specific role.

The next milestones include:

  • Expanded zkML support: Integrating with projects like Modulus Labs to verify AI inference on-chain
  • Cross-chain verification: Enabling Blacklight to verify agents operating across Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana
  • Institutional partnerships: Collaborations with Coinbase and Alibaba Cloud for enterprise agent deployment
  • Regulatory compliance tools: Building KYA frameworks for financial services adoption

Perhaps most importantly, Nillion is developing nilGPT—a fully private AI chatbot demonstrating how blind computation enables confidential agent interactions. This isn't just a demo; it's a blueprint for agents handling sensitive data in healthcare, finance, and government.

The Trustless Coordination Endgame​

Blacklight's launch marks a pivot point for the agent economy. Before ERC-8004, agents operated in silos—trusted within their own ecosystems but unable to coordinate across platforms without human intermediaries. After ERC-8004, agents can verify each other's identity, audit each other's behavior, and settle payments autonomously.

This unlocks entirely new categories of applications:

  • Decentralized hedge funds: Agents managing portfolios across chains, with verifiable investment strategies and transparent performance audits
  • Autonomous supply chains: Agents coordinating logistics, payments, and compliance without centralized oversight
  • AI-powered DAOs: Organizations governed by agents that vote, propose, and execute based on cryptographically verified decision-making logic
  • Cross-protocol liquidity management: Agents rebalancing assets across DeFi protocols with programmable risk constraints

The common thread? All require trustless coordination—the ability for agents to work together without pre-existing relationships or centralized trust anchors.

Nillion's Blacklight provides exactly that. By combining ERC-8004's identity and reputation infrastructure with programmable verification and blind computation, it creates a trust layer scalable enough for the trillion-agent economy on the horizon.

As blockchain becomes the plumbing for AI agents and global finance, the question isn't whether we need verification infrastructure—it's who builds it, and whether it's decentralized or controlled by a few gatekeepers. Blacklight's community-operated nodes and open standard make the case for the former.

The age of autonomous on-chain actors is here. The infrastructure is live. The only question left is what gets built on top.

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