Identity
ERC-8004 Robot Identity
On-chain discovery and identity for robots. Each robot gets a verifiable, decentralized identity anchored to hardware via ATECC608B secure elements.
Coming soonDistributed Robotics Group · Protocol Institute
Coordinating robots.
An open-source protocol stack for distributed robotics — identity, command, marketplace, attestation and fleet security. Engineered as arguments, then tested on real robots, wherever they run.
Building one robot is an engineering challenge; getting two or more to coordinate is a protocol problem.The thesis of the Distributed Robotics Group
What we're building
Full-stack open-source infrastructure for autonomous robot fleets — from on-chip cryptography to on-chain identity. Each layer is a separate, composable protocol.
On-chain discovery and identity for robots. Each robot gets a verifiable, decentralized identity anchored to hardware via ATECC608B secure elements.
Coming soonA FastAPI + Model Context Protocol gateway. LLMs discover, command and query robots in natural language, through per-robot isolated instances.
Coming soonA decentralized marketplace for robot work. Post a job, robots bid, results are verified on-chain with zero-knowledge proofs of sensor-data integrity.
Coming soonKZG polynomial commitments for batch sensor attestation, with Bulletproof range proofs on secp256k1. Provably honest robots, without revealing raw telemetry.
Coming soonMulti-sig fleet management on Safe{Wallet} — operator, hardware and recovery keys. No single point of failure across the swarm.
Coming soonThe physical layer: a self-balancing differential-drive robot with SimpleFOC motor control, MPC trajectory planning and an RT-2 vision-language oracle.
Coming soonSee it in action
Protocols are engineered arguments — so they get tested on real robots. Here is the stack running on hardware, end to end.
Commanding a robot in natural language through the MCP gateway.
Robots bidding on posted jobs in the task marketplace.
The network
Every robot registers a verifiable identity on-chain, then discovers its peers through the same registry. Machines find each other, agree on work, and prove what they did — no central operator, no single point of failure.
One registry. Many sites. A distributed fleet that already spans continents, speaking the same protocol wherever it runs.
Who builds this
DRG is an applied research group at the Protocol Institute. Half its focus is on the protocols themselves; the other half is on building the robots to test them. Protocols are engineered arguments — so DRG engineers and tests robot protocols on real robots.
It studies how decentralized coordination, blockchain infrastructure, and physical AI intersect to create a new class of protocol-design challenges. Anyone curious about onchain robotics is welcome at the table.
All code, all hardware designs, all protocols — open source. Come build the coordination layer for the next generation of machines.