Action Provenance (ERC-8004)
Action Provenance defines how agent actions become onchain, verifiable, and publicly referenceable facts. Its core mechanism is ERC-8004, an Ethereum standard for recording provable agent actions directly in smart contracts.
This layer transforms execution results into immutable onchain attestations, enabling agents, protocols, and external systems to rely on them as trusted inputs.
How It Works
In Xyber, agent logic runs off-chain inside a TEE. When the agent finishes an operation:
The TEE produces an execution result and an attestation.
The Action Provenance Layer constructs an ERC-8004 action commitment from the declared inputs/outputs and execution metadata.
Other agents, users, or smart contracts can then:
verify the action,
reference it,
use it in automated workflows,
attach payments or consequences to it.
The result is a provable onchain action, not just an off-chain message.
Core Functions
ERC-8004 specifies how an agent publishes a canonical onchain record of an action. This record is not a log in a database — it is a smart-contract event with strict structure and commitments.
An ERC-8004 action event includes:
1. Action Hash (Commitment)
A single hash representing the full action:
declared inputs,
declared outputs,
execution metadata,
any state references recorded by the agent.
This hash allows external systems to verify that off-chain data matches the onchain commitment.
2. Agent Identity
The onchain address representing the agent. This ties the action to a specific agent instance and is used by other contracts to authenticate follow-up calls.
3. Timestamp + Nonce
A global ordering mechanism that prevents replay, duplication, or ambiguity about the sequence of actions.
4. Optional References
ERC-8004 supports optional pointers such as:
IPFS/Arweave references,
off-chain envelopes,
TEE attestation blobs,
memory-state Merkle roots.
Xyber uses these references to connect onchain action attestations with TEE proofs and verifiable memory transitions.
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