How many AI agents already share a name?
The Agent Name Census reads every named agent across the major on-chain registries and measures the two things nobody else can: how often names collide, and how often they land on a live US trademark. Public method, pinned block heights, reproducible.
The Census enumerates named agents across Ethereum, Base and BNB ERC-8004 registries, deduplicates by owner, and computes name-collision rates (exact and by sound) and US-trademark knockout rates on the most-duplicated names. It reports collision signals with a stated method — never a legal opinion on any individual agent.
2026 edition — headline numbers
The first edition is compiled from a pinned block-height snapshot. Figures publish here on release:
| Measure | What it counts | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Named agents | across ETH · Base · BNB | — pending |
| Exact-name collisions | share of names used by >1 owner | — pending |
| Phonetic collisions | near-identical by sound | — pending |
| US trademark knockout | top names hitting a live US mark | — pending |
| Dead identities | names pointing at nothing resolvable | — pending |
Status: data collection in progress. This page is the methodology of record; the numbers replace the placeholders above on publication and each quarterly edition is dated and archived.
How the Census is built
- Enumerate — registry contracts resolved at runtime from the ERC-8004 reference repo (pinned, never hardcoded); mint logs read in fixed block windows at a recorded height.
- Resolve — each agent card fetched; unreachable or nameless cards are recorded as findings, not dropped.
- Deduplicate — by (name, owner) before any collision is counted, so one owner’s reuse isn’t mistaken for a clash.
- Screen — exact and phonetic collision across the corpus; US-trademark knockout on the most-duplicated names only (the two axes that scale).
- Publish — findings as a dated dataset with the block height and method attached.
Scope and ethics. The trademark knockout is US-only, and stated as such. No personal data is republished, and no individual builder is named or shamed — the Census reports rates and patterns, with a method, never a verdict on a person’s agent.