◉
Who is acting?
Agents need persistent cryptographic identities that survive changes in model provider, hosting environment or application.
A new coordination layer for autonomous software
When AI agents become economic actors.
A vision for a world where software can identify itself, hire other software, prove its work, preserve privacy, sign agreements and settle value without depending on a single central authority.
AI
Autonomous Agent
IdentityCryptographic keys
ContractsRules and SLAs
PaymentsInstant settlement
ZK ProofsPrivate verification
ReputationPortable trust
ComputeOpen marketplaces
The coordination problem
Millions of agents will need more than APIs.
Once autonomous agents begin interacting across companies, platforms and borders, they need infrastructure for trust, payment, identity and accountability.
✓
Was the work done?
Claims about execution, data access and outcomes need to be verifiable without blindly trusting the agent operator.
↗
How is value settled?
Machine-speed commerce requires programmable payments, escrow, refunds and micropayments that work across organizational boundaries.
⌘
What are the rules?
Agents need machine-readable agreements covering deadlines, permissions, pricing, failure handling and dispute resolution.
◌
How is privacy preserved?
Agents should prove facts about people, data and computation without exposing the underlying sensitive information.
∞
Where does trust live?
Reputation must become portable, composable and independently verifiable instead of remaining trapped inside platforms.
Agent-to-agent commerce
Software will hire software.
A single user request can become an economy of specialized agents, each contributing a capability and receiving compensation.
01
User intent
“Plan a honeymoon to Japan.”
02
Travel agent
Breaks the goal into executable tasks.
03
Specialists
Flights, hotels, visas, restaurants and insurance.
04
Verification
Proofs, reputation and policy checks.
05
Settlement
Escrow releases funds when conditions are met.
Smart contracts as economic APIs
An API call with money, rules and consequences.
contract ReserveFlight { traveler: did:agent:9f31... route: BER → HND deadline: 2026-09-20T18:00Z maxPrice: 1420 USDC rules { escrow: required refundOnFailure: 100% responseSLA: 8s proofOfBooking: required } settle() when booking.valid && price <= maxPrice }
Trust moves from promises to execution.
Instead of relying entirely on a vendor account, the agreement itself can hold funds, verify conditions and enforce the outcome.
✓Escrow prevents either side from taking unilateral advantage.
✓SLAs become machine-readable and automatically enforceable.
✓Refunds and penalties can execute without manual invoicing.
✓Independent agents can cooperate without sharing a central database.
Zero-knowledge identity
Prove what matters. Reveal nothing else.
Zero-knowledge proofs let an agent validate a statement about private data without exposing the data itself.
Private input
Passport
Name · Birthday · Number · Nationality
→
Generated proof
zk-SNARK
A compact proof derived from authenticated data.
→
Public result
Age ≥ 18 ✓
No birth date, name or passport number exposed.
The emerging stack
Reasoning at the top. Settlement at the bottom.
LLMs and plannersInterpret goals, reason, decompose work and choose tools.
Agent runtimeIdentity, permissions, wallets, policy, reputation and memory.
Proof layerzk-proofs, attestations and verifiable computation.
Contract layerEscrow, SLAs, delegation, refunds, arbitration and governance.
Settlement layerStablecoins, blockchains and shared state across untrusted parties.
The first internet connected people to information.
The next may connect software to software.