ERC-8278: Service Objects

Abstract

This ERC defines an ERC-721 extension for service objects. A service object exposes a service manifest, a service operator, and a payment route consisting of a revenue recipient, payment manifest URI, payment manifest hash, and route nonce.

This ERC does not define service discovery, reputation, validation, payment settlement, endpoint execution, smart account behavior, or any particular offchain service protocol.

Motivation

A transferable token can represent control over an offchain service, but existing token interfaces do not expose the operational and payment-route state that clients need before interacting with that service. This ERC standardizes a small read interface and event set so indexers, service clients, and payment middleware can resolve current service metadata without relying on a centralized registry.

Specification

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

A compliant contract MUST implement ERC-721 and ERC-165.

The ERC-165 interface ID for the following interface is 0xf94c99e5.

interface IERCServiceObject is IERC165 {
    event ServiceManifestUpdated(
        uint256 indexed serviceId,
        string uri,
        bytes32 indexed manifestHash
    );

    event ServiceOperatorUpdated(
        uint256 indexed serviceId,
        address indexed operator,
        uint64 expiresAt
    );

    event ServicePaymentRouteUpdated(
        uint256 indexed serviceId,
        address indexed revenueRecipient,
        string paymentURI,
        bytes32 indexed paymentManifestHash,
        uint64 routeNonce
    );

    function serviceManifest(uint256 serviceId)
        external
        view
        returns (string memory uri, bytes32 manifestHash);

    function serviceOperator(uint256 serviceId)
        external
        view
        returns (address operator, uint64 expiresAt);

    function servicePaymentRoute(uint256 serviceId)
        external
        view
        returns (
            address revenueRecipient,
            string memory paymentURI,
            bytes32 paymentManifestHash,
            uint64 routeNonce
        );
}

serviceId is the ERC-721 tokenId.

ownerOf(serviceId) is the service owner.

serviceManifest(serviceId) returns a URI and keccak256 hash of the exact bytes of the current service manifest.

serviceOperator(serviceId) returns the current service operator and expiry. A zero operator means no operator is specified. A zero expiry means no expiry is specified.

servicePaymentRoute(serviceId) returns the current revenue recipient, payment manifest URI, payment manifest hash, and route nonce. The route nonce MUST change when the revenue recipient or payment manifest hash changes.

The payment manifest MAY describe x402 payment routes, but x402 is not required by this ERC.

The service manifest MAY describe MCP endpoints or capability documents, but MCP is not required by this ERC.

Rationale

ERC-721 is used for ownership because wallets, marketplaces, and indexers already understand ERC-721 transfers and metadata.

The payment route groups revenue recipient, payment manifest, and route nonce so clients can read the state needed to validate an offchain payment offer with one call.

The service operator is separate from ERC-721 approvals because marketplace approvals are transfer permissions, not service operation permissions.

URI/hash commitments are used instead of onchain endpoint arrays because service metadata can be large and mutable.

Backwards Compatibility

This ERC is opt-in and does not change ERC-721 behavior. Contracts that do not implement this interface remain ordinary ERC-721 contracts.

Existing service assets can expose this interface directly or through a wrapper that also exposes the required ERC-721 ownership semantics. A later profile may define how the same service semantics are exposed by an ERC-7656-linked service contract.

Test Cases

Test cases are included in the reference implementation.

Reference Implementation

A reference implementation is available at https://github.com/MeltedMindz/erc-service-object/tree/v0.1.0.

Security Considerations

This ERC does not prove service quality, availability, endpoint honesty, payment finality, or legal rights. It only exposes current route and manifest commitments.

Clients MUST treat manifest URI contents as untrusted until the fetched bytes match the onchain hash.

Payment clients SHOULD verify that offchain payment offers match the current payment route before authorizing payment.

Marketplaces SHOULD include service manifest hash, payment manifest hash, revenue recipient, service operator, and route nonce in sale-order review or warnings.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.