Registration is not proof

Out of 322,627 registered ERC-8004 agents, 2,909 answer when called.

ERC-8004 gives agents a public identity record: name, description, endpoints, and reputation data verifiable across 28 blockchains. That record is useful because builders can find the service they are supposed to call.

Registration alone does not tell a builder whether the endpoint is alive.

For each agent, we test DNS resolution, HTTP status, MCP tool discovery, A2A handshakes, response time, platform fingerprints, spam signals, and x402 payment behavior. The checks are about the service behind the record, not the polish of the record itself.

The results are uneven. Some agents with high metadata scores never answer. Some complete profiles point to unreachable services. Some registrations look duplicated or placeholder-only. A clean profile can still lead to an unusable agent.

The on-chain agent market has identity. It also needs live quality checks that tell users and other agents whether a service is real, reachable, and useful when called.

That is what The Spawn is building.