Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) vs ERC-8444: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Onchain
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both. Agentic Resource Discovery is a prerequisite of ERC-8444: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Onchain.
| Agentic Resource Discovery ARD | ERC-8444: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Onchain ERC-8444 | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 1 Discover: What is here, and where? | 1 Discover: What is here, and where? |
| Answers | Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time? | How can on-chain skills, task bounties and agent identities be found through ordinary ARD search, without the searcher needing a wallet or an RPC endpoint? |
| Governed by | Authored by individuals at Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face (Junjie Bu, R.V. Guha, Shaun Smith); published as an open GitHub project (ards-project/ard-spec) with no formal standards body yet; contributions acknowledged from AWS, Cisco, Databricks, GitHub, GoDaddy, Nvidia, Salesforce and Snowflake | Ethereum EIP/ERC process (Ethereum Magicians discussion + ERCs repository); status Draft |
| Status (issuer's words) | Proposal | Draft Standards Track ERC, created 2026-10-12 |
| Version | v0.91 (2026-08-26) | Draft, created 2026-10-12 (2026-10-12) |
| Form / transport | well-known file | on-chain registry |
| Found at | /.well-known/ard.json | /.well-known/ard.json |
| Implementation | multi-implementation — agenticweb.wiki /check/ probe (13/268 origins on /.well-known/ard.json; 43/268 on predecessor /.well-known/ai-catalog.json) | prototype |
| Evidence | 2 verified, 2 reported | 2 verified |
| Primary use case | Let agents discover my API or service | Let agents discover my API or service |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md | https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8444 |
When to use which
- Choose Agentic Resource Discovery when your question is “Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time?” and you accept its maturity: status "Proposal", implementation multi-implementation (agenticweb.wiki /check/ probe (13/268 origins on /.well-known/ard.json; 43/268 on predecessor /.well-known/ai-catalog.json)).
- Choose ERC-8444: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Onchain when your question is “How can on-chain skills, task bounties and agent identities be found through ordinary ARD search, without the searcher needing a wallet or an RPC endpoint?” and you accept its maturity: status "Draft Standards Track ERC, created 2026-10-12", implementation prototype.
Read the full articles
- Agentic Resource Discovery: Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time?
- ERC-8444: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) Onchain: How can on-chain skills, task bounties and agent identities be found through ordinary ARD search, without the searcher needing a wallet or an RPC endpoint?