As artificial intelligence reshapes everything from finance to cybersecurity, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is strategizing how the world’s second-largest blockchain fits into this future.
Instead of trying to merge blockchains and AI at the raw compute level – something Ethereum was never designed to do – EF sees the network playing a different role: acting as a coordination and verification layer in an increasingly AI-mediated world.
Davide Crapis, head of AI at the EF, says the motivation is as philosophical as it is technical. More and more digital activities are being handled by AI systems, whether answering questions, executing transactions, filtering applications or writing software. If these systems are controlled by centralized entities, the values that underpin much of the crypto movement – decentralization, self-sovereignty, censorship resistance and privacy – could be eroded.
“If AI doesn’t have the properties that we care about — self-sovereignty, censorship resistance, privacy — and we use AI for everything, basically no one has those properties anymore,” he told CoinDesk in an interview at NEARCON 2026.
In this sense, Ethereum’s AI push is less about competing with OpenAI or Google on model size and more about ensuring that as AI becomes the interface to the Internet, it doesn’t quietly recentralize power.
The FE’s strategy is based on two main fronts. The first is what Crapis calls decentralized AI coordination. As autonomous AI agents – software that can perform tasks on its own – become more common, they will need ways to identify themselves, build trust and exchange payments. According to him, Ethereum is well positioned to provide this infrastructure.
“Ethereum functions as a public, governance-free verification layer for AI,” he said.
In practical terms, this means that the heavy computing work of AI remains off-chain, on traditional servers. But Ethereum can help agents discover each other through public ledgers, assess their reputation through transparent histories, route payments, and anchor cryptographic proofs that verify the results. Crapis likens it to a decentralized version of Google Reviews combined with payment rails.
The EF has participated in the development of standards to formalize this ecosystem, including an agent identity and trust protocol, known as ERC-8004. According to Crapis, these standards are gaining traction beyond Ethereum, signaling that the coordination layer of AI agents can become blockchain-based even if the AI itself is not.
The second focus area aims to integrate the core principles of Ethereum – such as privacy, openness, censorship resistance and security – into the world of AI. Crapis refers to this effort internally as “Props AI,” shorthand for the values that the Ethereum ecosystem has historically prioritized.
Privacy is an important part of this conversation. Interacting with centralized AI services can gradually generate detailed user profiles based on queries, usage patterns and behaviors.
From Ethereum’s perspective, the challenge is to design AI systems that allow users to maintain greater control over their data and identity. One approach is to encourage AI processing locally on users’ devices as much as possible, thereby reducing the amount of information that needs to be sent to centralized servers.
The broader goal is to ensure that as AI becomes integrated into everyday digital interactions, individuals still retain significant control over their data and how it is used, rather than handing that power over entirely to large platforms.
“We want to create a world where users retain as much data and power as possible,” Crapis said. “We just don’t give it to operators.”
Security concerns also underpin this strategy. As AI systems become more capable, they are likely to automate and scale cyberattacks in ways that strain existing defenses. Crapis predicts a near future in which AI systems can convincingly impersonate humans, undermining traditional authentication methods.
“We will likely see AI-orchestrated hacks,” he said. “Old security models break down when AI can impersonate a human. »
In this environment, cryptographic keys may become more important. Control of a private key is mathematically verifiable and does not depend on human judgment. Crapis describes the long-term role of Ethereum in clear terms.
“In a world where AI is wild, we want Ethereum to be the place with the big lock,” he said. “If I have the keys, I still have the power.”
Crapis described the FE-led AI initiative as one of several major priorities rather than the dominant priority. Nonetheless, the move reflects a growing recognition within the crypto industry that AI will shape the next phase of the internet. If this future is negotiated by intelligent agents rather than human clicks, the question becomes who controls the rails on which these agents operate.
Ethereum’s bet is that while it doesn’t power AI brains, it can help govern the environment in which those brains operate, anchoring identity, coordinating payments, and preserving user control.
Read more: Ethereum Foundation launches new AI team to support agentic payments
