independent audit layer · agent economy · updated 2026-08-27
Independent measurement of the agent economy.
Numbers about the agent economy get cited as proof that it exists — how many agents are registered, how many sellers take payment. Nobody was checking what stands behind them. AgentCount builds instruments that check, and publishes every answer with the evidence behind it. Never a score.
Agents counted, by chain
live485,257
- BNB Chain
- 300,552
- Base
- 67,951
- Ethereum mainnet
- 50,419
- Billions
- 25,976
- MegaETH
- 12,727
- + 6 more chains →
- 27,632
latest sweep 2026-08-27provenance ↓
Instruments
two · both publishedTakes every agent registered on the chains it sweeps and asks whether anything stands behind the registration: does the document resolve, does it say what the standard requires, does the service it names answer. Registration counts are the figure most often cited as proof the agent economy exists, and this is the instrument that checks them.
485,257 agents · 11 chains · swept 2026-08-27
Registration says an agent exists; it says nothing about whether anyone is selling. This instrument enumerates the sellers that catalogs advertise as taking payment over x402, and asks whether each one answers, quotes a real price when asked, and has ever been paid on-chain. Every seller that let us ask, answered — but only one in three quotes a price a buyer could actually pay.
2,753 sellers · 2,026 hosts · swept 2026-09-24
Inside the Registration Census
seven checks · ordered, except #7Every agent climbs the same ladder. Each rung only makes sense once the one below it passed — except the last, which is readable whether or not a document ever resolved, so it runs on its own track.
Registeredlive
Registered? The agent exists in the on-chain registry, with an owner and a document URL.
internal: registered
Resolvablelive
Reachable? The document URL it declared actually answers when fetched.
internal: resolvable
Parseablelive
Readable? What came back is valid JSON that a machine can read.
internal: parseable
Conformantlive
Follows the spec? The document meets what ERC-8004 requires of it.
internal: conformant
Boundlive
Claims its identity? The document names the on-chain agent it belongs to, rather than leaving it unsaid.
internal: bound
Livein development
Answers? A declared endpoint responds to a probe. Not implemented yet, so nobody passes or fails it.
internal: live
Attestedlive
Has feedback? At least one on-chain feedback entry names this agent.
internal: attested
What we found
population-weighted · 11 chainsof valid registration documents declare no way to reach the agent — no services entry at all, or one with nothing in it.
217,919 / 386,695 documents that parsed and reached check 4 (Follows the spec?)
of registration files never say which on-chain agent they belong to — the spec only recommends the field that would bind them. Check 5 (Claims its identity?) records those as unclaimed: neither a pass nor a fail.
260,543 / 385,426 documents that passed check 4 (Follows the spec?) (conformant)
have at least one on-chain feedback entry. Agents with feedback are less likely to have a document that resolves than agents with none — 59.1% against 83.0%. A sampled read traces most of Base’s feedback to a handful of client addresses.
47,320 / 485,257 agents in these 11 runs
Whether money reaches a registered agent is read from token transfer logs rather than from the registry, so it is not one of the seven checks and no sweep reports it. What the join asks, and what it is read against.
369,130 agents · outside the seven checks
All findings, chain by chain →The report: 4 chains, 369,130 agents →
Provenance
reproducibleEvery number on this page comes from one sweep per chain, pinned to one block each. A result you cannot recompute is an opinion; this is what recomputes it.
The completed sweep behind each chain in the figures above — download any run, or read how each check is measured →
| chain | agents | pinned block | run |
|---|---|---|---|
| BNB Chainbsc | 300,552 | 117,948,134 | 103c16ca |
| Basebase | 67,951 | 50,394,649 | 7a7a7b4f |
| Ethereum mainnetmainnet | 50,419 | 25,824,613 | 49418208 |
| Billionsbillions | 25,976 | 6,914,383 | b05a52b0 |
| MegaETHmegaeth | 12,727 | 24,764,978 | cf17b7fa |
| X Layerxlayer | 11,179 | 68,788,163 | 3a8fe94e |
| Celocelo | 9,779 | 75,653,978 | 12505271 |
| Gnosisgnosis | 4,115 | 47,885,839 | 89fedbd0 |
| Arbitrumarbitrum | 1,387 | 497,799,172 | 3090d96c |
| Polygonpolygon | 630 | 92,564,272 | a762a0e3 |
| OP Mainnetop | 542 | 155,976,238 | 9c66651c |