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.

See what we found ↓How a sweep works →

Agents counted, by chain

live

485,257

BNB Chain
300,552
Base
67,951
Ethereum mainnet
50,419
Billions
25,976
MegaETH
12,727

latest sweep 2026-08-27provenance ↓


Instruments

two · both published
Two populations, measured separately and never blended: who is registered, and who actually sells. Each instrument publishes its own figures with its own evidence, and neither stands in for the other.

Takes 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 #7

Every 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.

01

Registeredlive

Registered? The agent exists in the on-chain registry, with an owner and a document URL.

internal: registered

02

Resolvablelive

Reachable? The document URL it declared actually answers when fetched.

internal: resolvable

03

Parseablelive

Readable? What came back is valid JSON that a machine can read.

internal: parseable

04

Conformantlive

Follows the spec? The document meets what ERC-8004 requires of it.

internal: conformant

05

Boundlive

Claims its identity? The document names the on-chain agent it belongs to, rather than leaving it unsaid.

internal: bound

06

Livein development

Answers? A declared endpoint responds to a probe. Not implemented yet, so nobody passes or fails it.

internal: live

07

Attestedlive

Has feedback? At least one on-chain feedback entry names this agent.

internal: attested


What we found

population-weighted · 11 chains
Four headlines from the current sweep, across every published chain at once. The full ladder — every check, every status, one chain at a time — is on the findings page.
56.4%

of 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?)

67.6%

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)

9.8%

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

reproducible

Every 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 →

The completed sweep behind each chain in the figures above
chainagentspinned blockrun
BNB Chainbsc300,552117,948,134103c16ca
Basebase67,95150,394,6497a7a7b4f
Ethereum mainnetmainnet50,41925,824,61349418208
Billionsbillions25,9766,914,383b05a52b0
MegaETHmegaeth12,72724,764,978cf17b7fa
X Layerxlayer11,17968,788,1633a8fe94e
Celocelo9,77975,653,97812505271
Gnosisgnosis4,11547,885,83989fedbd0
Arbitrumarbitrum1,387497,799,1723090d96c
Polygonpolygon63092,564,272a762a0e3
OP Mainnetop542155,976,2389c66651c

How each check is measured →Download any run →