52,671 agents are registered on Ethereum mainnet under ERC-8004, as of our read at 05:26 UTC on 12 October. Meanwhile the SatoHub library tracks 457 things you build *with*, and only six of them are filed as Onchain Agents. Those two numbers measure different things, so don't divide one by the other. The gap is still the story: identity is cheap to register, and a working, checkable stack is the part that takes effort.
This is the weekly Agent Economy Update for 2026-W42. Every figure below comes from our directory data or the ERC-8004 read named in the sources. Nothing is estimated.
The ERC-8004 number, read carefully
ERC-8004 gives an agent an onchain identity record that other agents and apps can look up. Our latest read of Ethereum mainnet counts 52,671 registered agents (checked 2026-10-12T05:26:08Z).
"Registered" means a record exists. It does not mean the agent works or does what its record says. Self-reported is not verified, and a registry entry is self-reported by default. The number is a good measure of adoption of the standard. It is a poor measure of agents you should hand a wallet to.
Builders also shipped tooling around the standard this week. Four ERC-8004 entries landed in the library on 2026-10-08: Pinata ERC-8004, ERC-8004 Registry Contracts, Agent0 SDK and create-8004-agent. That is the pattern you want to see: contracts, an SDK, a scaffolder and a pinning integration, so registering an agent stops being a research project.
The library: 457 tracked, and what it's made of
The mix, by category:
- ▸MCP: 142. About 31% of everything we track, and more than the next four categories combined (API / SDK 43, Trading Tool 36, Wallet Infrastructure 34, Data Tool 34).
- ▸Agent Framework: 30 and Skill Repo: 30. The runtime and the reusable behaviors.
- ▸Payment Rail: 23. Agents that pay and get paid need this layer to exist.
- ▸Security Tool: 17, DeFi Tool: 19, Developer Tool: 28.
- ▸Agent Marketplace: 7, Onchain Agent: 6, Agent Launchpad: 3.
Read the first line again. The most-populated category is MCP, the interface layer that lets an agent call tools. The agent economy is being assembled from connectors long before it is assembled from famous agents. That is a builder's market: the parts are the product.
The chain mix, by number of listings tagged: Multichain 162, Base 158, Ethereum 120, Solana 116, Arbitrum 60, Polygon 56, BNB Chain 45, and 46 still marked Unknown. Chain tags overlap, so these do not add up to 457 and you should not sum them. Base sits just behind Multichain, and Solana is close enough to Ethereum that "EVM only" is a risky assumption for your stack. The 46 Unknown listings are a documentation gap, not a chain.
Sato Score leaders
The top of the Sato Score this week: Raydium 95, OpenClaw 92, Hermes Agent 92, BlockRun MCP 91, Olas (Autonolas) 90, CoinGecko MCP 89. All six sit in the High tier.
A reminder we will keep repeating, because it is the most commonly misread number we publish: the Sato Score is a transparency and liveness score. It tells you how much open, current, checkable evidence exists about a project. It is not a grade for safety, quality or returns. A high score means there is a lot to inspect. It does not mean you can skip inspecting.
Notable moves this week
Three release lines are worth a builder's attention. Each link is the primary source, and we describe the release titles rather than claim more than they say:
- ▸ClawRouter v0.12.286 and v0.12.287. The first is titled as an opt-in Solana batch-settlement release, and the second as a live model catalog. Both are from BlockRunAI. Read the release notes before assuming how settlement behaves.
- ▸OpenClaw v2026.10.2 and Hermes Agent rc.15-v0.21.7. Two of the framework-layer projects that lead our Sato Score list shipped new releases in the same week. Active release cadence is exactly what the score's liveness side is built to notice.
- ▸DefiLlama-Adapters latest tvlModules. A rolling release of the adapter modules that data tools lean on. Boring infrastructure, constantly depended on.
Also new: Sato Agent, added to the library on 2026-10-11 as Wallet Infrastructure, and a v0.3.2 release on GitHub. It is our own project, so treat our description with the same skepticism we ask you to apply to everyone else's, and read the release page.
What to watch
- ▸Registered versus used. If ERC-8004 registrations keep climbing, the useful next question is how many of those agents have anything beyond the record. We will report it only when we can measure it.
- ▸The Unknown chain bucket. Fewer Unknowns means better documentation across the library.
- ▸Payment rails and Solana settlement. Payment Rail is a small category at 23 listings, and a release like ClawRouter's batch-settlement shows where builders are putting effort.
Build yours
The library is the parts bin, and 142 MCPs, 30 frameworks and 23 payment rails mean you rarely start from nothing. The builder maps the stack for the agent you describe: wallet, skills, MCPs, payment rail, runtime. Describe the agent, and we map what builds it.
Build your own crypto agent and join the agent economy at satohub.ai/build.