Layer 1 · Identity
ERC-8004 Robot Passport
Each robot is registered on ERC-8004. Its passport is owned by the operator’s wallet, with an agent card on IPFS and a fleet vouch as an EAS attestation.
Distributed Robotics Group · Protocol Institute
Coordinating robots.
An open-source protocol stack for decentralized, distributed robotics: identity, discovery, payment, control and marketplace. 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
Five questions come up whenever two machines with different owners work together: who are you, how do I find you, how do I pay you, how do I tell you what to do, and what’s a fair price? Each answer is a separate, composable protocol with its own open repository.
Each robot is registered on ERC-8004. Its passport is owned by the operator’s wallet, with an agent card on IPFS and a fleet vouch as an EAS attestation.
No directory and no matchmaker. Agents read the public registry, keep only robots vouched for by trusted fleets, and get an MCP config wired to every one.
Pay per use with x402 and USDC on Base, or by card through Stripe. Money goes straight from payer to robot owner, and the payer gets back a signed driving ticket.
A FastAPI + Model Context Protocol gateway with one isolated MCP server per robot, a browser driving console, and one driver at a time. Adding a robot means adding a plugin.
An open Robot Task Auction Protocol: agents post structured tasks, qualified robots bid, the result is checked against the spec, and payment settles on success.
Cheap on purpose, so anyone can join: the Freenove PiCar with our own control server on the Pi, and the ESP32-S3 Tumbller. Any board that can run a small web server can join.
An ATECC608B secure chip holds a key that can’t be copied out and signs every request, binding the passport to the physical machine.
Coming soonKZG polynomial commitments for batch sensor attestation. Provably honest robots, without revealing raw telemetry.
Coming soonMulti-sig fleet management on Safe{Wallet}: operator, hardware and recovery keys. A lost laptop or stolen robot never compromises the fleet.
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.
Get your robot an ERC-8004 passport. The registrar checks its description and pins the agent card to IPFS, and your own wallet signs the registration. Open to allowlisted operators.
register.yakrobot.com ↗Buy a time-boxed lease over x402 in USDC, or by card, and take the wheel from your browser. Payment goes straight to the robot’s owner.
pay.yakrobot.com ↗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. Nine robots in Oulu, Berlin, Rome, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, Seattle, Ottawa and New England, run by different people on three continents and speaking the same protocol wherever they run.
Who builds this
DRG is an applied research group at the Protocol Institute. Half its focus is on the robot coordination 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, robotics 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 robots.