A group of contributors from Pocket Network Foundation and Synaptika has submitted ERC-8294 to Ethereum's ERCs repository. The draft, titled 'Validation Network for ERC-8004,' defines a standard interface that lets a network of independent validators act as the trust layer for AI agent verification. If adopted, it would enforce operator diversity as a configurable policy — callers decide how many validators must attest and how many separate operators they come from.
What the standard adds
ERC-8294 builds directly on ERC-8004, Ethereum's emerging standard for trustless AI agents. It introduces the IValidationNetwork interface and a portable attestation envelope based on EIP-712. The idea is simple: any decentralized network — a permissionless RPC network, an AVS, a TEE consortium, an oracle network — can implement the standard. Clients then verify attestations using the same code, no matter which backend network is in play.
The proposal doesn't touch ERC-8004's existing Validation Registry contract. Single-address validators that work today will keep working unchanged. ERC-8294 is an extension, not a replacement.
Operator diversity by design
Diversity isn't just a suggestion here — it's baked into the contract surface. Callers specify a minimum number of validators and a minimum number of distinct, independent operators those validators must be drawn from. That makes it harder for a single operator to dominate attestations, a common criticism of earlier attestation designs.
Reference implementation and next steps
The team plans to ship a reference implementation built against the Pocket Network supplier set, which runs roughly 5,000 supplier nodes across multiple independent operators. That'll give developers something concrete to test against when the v1 spec drops.
Right now the draft is with Ethereum's ERC editors for review. Community discussion is happening on Ethereum Magicians. No timeline for finalization yet, but the proposal is open for feedback.
