Abstract
The Agency Protocol defines a decentralized trust infrastructure in which autonomous agents cooperate by issuing cryptographically‑signed, domain‑scoped promises and verifiable assessments. Each promise carries a dual‑component stake—an at‑risk credit deposit and a non‑refundable operational‑cost fee—that is locked in content‑addressed storage and returned or slashed according to assessment consensus. Assessments are merit‑weighted; an agent’s merit is a non‑transferable, domain‑specific reputation score updated by matrix‑factorized aggregation of historical outcomes, while credits form a fully transferable internal currency. Merit discounts future stake requirements, creating a positive feedback loop that makes honest behaviour utility‑maximising.
External facts enter the system through a decentralised oracle network whose members stake credits and are slashed on divergence from median reports, providing tamper‑evident data for real‑world promises. Formal game‑theoretic analysis proves that, under calibrated parameters (α = 1, β ≈ 1–1.8, γ ≥ 0.15, λ ≥ 4, δ ≥ 0.88), promise‑keeping and truthful assessment constitute a focal, coalition‑resistant, sub‑game‑perfect Nash equilibrium; dishonest coalitions face super‑linear detection probability and exponentially rising coordination cost beyond eight members. Lyapunov analysis shows the cooperative state is dynamically stable, returning to >95 % compliance within 120 rounds after perturbations.
A three‑phase implementation roadmap—core agent layer, AI‑validator bootstrap, progressive decentralisation—demonstrates practical viability at Internet scale while preserving verifiability, economic sustainability, and governance independence.
Creative Commons License
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Recommended Citation
Joseph, David, "Agency Protocol: A Decentralized Trust-Building System Using Domain-Specific Merit and Economic Stakes to Incentivize Promise-Keeping in Agent-to-Agent Interactions", Technical Disclosure Commons, (July 22, 2025)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/8381