The Ethereum Foundation is positioning its blockchain as a coordination and verification layer for artificial intelligence systems. Davide Crapis, the foundation's AI lead, emphasizes ensuring decentralization, self-sovereignty, and privacy in an AI-dominated future. This strategy focuses on AI agent coordination and embedding Ethereum's core principles into AI applications.
As artificial intelligence transforms sectors like finance and cybersecurity, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is outlining a role for its network beyond raw computation. Instead, Ethereum would serve as a trust infrastructure for AI-mediated interactions, according to Davide Crapis, the EF's AI lead.
Crapis, speaking in an interview at NEARCON 2026, highlighted philosophical motivations alongside technical ones. He warned that reliance on centralized AI could undermine crypto values such as decentralization and privacy. “If AI doesn’t have the properties we care about — self-sovereignty, censorship resistance, privacy — and then we use AI for everything, basically no one has those properties anymore,” Crapis said.
The EF's approach divides into two areas. First, decentralized AI coordination: as autonomous AI agents proliferate, they require mechanisms for identity, trust, and payments. “Ethereum functions as a public, governance-less verification layer for AI,” Crapis explained. AI's intensive computing would occur off-chain, while Ethereum handles discovery via public registries, reputation tracking, payment routing, and cryptographic proofs of outcomes.
The foundation is advancing standards like ERC-8004 for agent identity and trust, which are attracting interest beyond Ethereum.
Second, integrating Ethereum principles—termed “Props AI” internally—into AI, with a focus on privacy and security. To protect user data, the EF advocates local device processing over centralized servers. “We want to create a world where users retain as much data and power as possible,” Crapis stated. “We just don’t give it to operators.”
On security, Crapis anticipates AI-driven cyberattacks that impersonate humans, breaking traditional models. “We will probably see hacks orchestrated by AI,” he said. “The old security models break when AI can impersonate a human.” Cryptographic keys, verifiable mathematically, would provide robust control. “In a world where AI is in the wild, we want Ethereum to be the place with the big lock,” Crapis added. “If I have the keys, I still have power.”
This AI initiative ranks among the EF's several priorities, reflecting broader crypto industry shifts toward AI integration.
