Blockchain

ERC-8004 just went live on Ethereum mainnet, and for the third time in six weeks something ships in agentic commerce and I end up writing about it. (I managed to resist when Coinbase launched x402, so at least there’s some self-control left.) But the pace itself is the story: MCP, UCP, ACP, ERC-8004, x402, all reaching production between late 2025 and January 2026. Eighteen months from “agents can use tools” to “agents have passports and bank accounts.” That’s genuinely unusual for standards work. ...

My feed did it again. Third time in six weeks: something launches in the agentic commerce space, the usual suspects celebrate, and I find myself writing about it. In late December I published an architecture for agentic travel distribution that I’d been designing for months; that one was proactive, and the reactions suggested it resonated. Then Google launched UCP two weeks later, and I wrote about what travel needs from it. Now ERC-8004, the Ethereum standard for “Trustless Agents,” goes live on mainnet, and my timeline is a chorus of people announcing that AI agents finally have identity, reputation, and wallets. (I managed to resist when Coinbase launched x402, so at least there’s that.) ...

The travel digital identity gap, and why blockchain bridges it Late September, I’m in Heraklion for our Travel Un’chained conference. Michael Ros from Sleap.io and I are at the resort reception, and they hand us forms (name, ID number, address, all the fields) before taking our ID cards and disappearing to make photocopies. In 2025. Facial recognition at airports, digital wallets on our phones, and a process still requiring a paper scan. I know we both used the anecdote to smile with other attendees, so with this article I officially exhaust its value as storytelling. ...

🇪🇸📍Live from Decode Travel Barcelona. I’m nearing a dozen hackathons under my belt, but kicking off the 4th edition of Decode Travel stands out. Metrics are showing real traction. Stablecoins anyone? Agentic everything 2025? We are finally seeing the convergence of AI with a foundation layer that enables agentic (yes) transactions, digital payments, and digital identity to happen in a trusted and certain way. No spoilers… but I have a feeling we’re going to see live examples of this on Friday. Jury, get ready 😉 ...

Programme context and Chain4Travel’s participation In late 2024, the European Central Bank (ECB) launched an innovation platform seeking “pioneers” and “visionaries” to collaborate on digital euro development. The programme aimed to demonstrate how conditional payments could be implemented technically, provide opportunities for participants to interact with simulated digital euro interfaces, and explore additional use cases for the digital currency. As part of their preparation phase for a potential digital euro launch, the ECB invited stakeholders including merchants, banks, payment service providers, fintech companies, and technical experts to participate in this groundbreaking initiative. ...

Looking forward to joining the Travolution.com European Summit on Tuesday, May 13th in London, where at 13:05 I’ll dive into: “Connect, distribute and pay – Web3 and crypto as enablers”. In a 2025 where stablecoin adoption is absolutely exploding, shocking skeptics and vindicating believers, with Q1 transaction volumes surging to $14 trillion and outpacing Visa’s $13 trillion for the same period. Meanwhile, the travel industry is finally transitioning from cautious pilot projects to robust, onchain infrastructure stacks like Camino Network, with over 2 million transactions processed as of late April and more than 78,000 wallet addresses across the ecosystem. This transformation is decades overdue, but possible now that we’ve unlocked the technology to seamlessly integrate connectivity and distribution with payment: we call it TravelFi. ...

📍The early bird catches… two events in Barcelona. Just landed 🛬 in #BCN for a 2-day including 1-nighter trip to catch up and participate in #tourism #innovation. First stop: FutureTravel Summit to to connect with travel innovators, startups, investors, and executives to discuss what’s next for the industry. Meet you there in a bit! Second stop: #TechTourismGames hackathon within the Grup CETT Smart Tourism Congress, to witness innovation being built live on two tracks: Artificial Intelligence and Decentralization, and their fusion to implement Smart Tourism. I’ll be there mentoring the teams from tonight nonstop to tomorrow evening. ...

This marks my 6th or 7th travel tech hackathon, and our second Decode Travel. As usual, here comes my post from the trenches! A few observations that stood out: First, I’m impressed that the hackers took on some of the most systemic hackathon challenges - about payments, personalization, and connectivity. These are exactly the endemic problems of the travel industry that we are working to solve with the Camino Network. ...

Reporting live from the floor at DER Touristik Online GmbH where the stage is getting prepared and DER Hackathon teams will be pitching today their solutions to the challenge on #sustainability💚 in #travel: tokenize Sustainable Aviation Fuel on Camino Network for novel interoperability between anchor industry players DER and Lufthansa, with the traveler and travel ecosystem at large in mind. I witnessed stellar talent💻 and good vibes🍻 during the last three code-filled days, and can testify to the quality of the pitches💯: can’t wait to see what the jury panel will think of the proposed ideas! ...

After this last “stealth” month I am very excited to showcase at ITB Berlin - the world’s leading travel trade show - what has been cooking at Peakwork AG and we are now introducing: our novel Web3 Travel Platform, powered by the next level of travel technology. If you want to know more about solutions for vouchers + trading + loyalty in complex cross-partner scenarios, yet featuring delightful and seamless UX for businesses and travelers, then come by the booth and have a chat with Manuel Saballus, Christian Liebig or myself: we will be delighted to talk about your next Web3 project. ...