The challenge with existing infrastructure
Today’s identity infrastructure was built for people. Agents do not fit the model. Traditional KYC assumes a human subject with a passport, an address, a face, and a fixed legal identity. Agents have none of those by default. There is no shared standard for verifying what an agent is, who stands behind it, what permissions it holds, or how far those permissions extend. Even where KYC is not required, existing systems actively prevent machines from creating accounts; most onboarding flows require an associated phone number. That creates a trust gap exactly where machine-native systems need trust most. In multi-agent environments, counterparties need a reliable way to verify credentials, mandates, and provenance without depending on a centralized platform to broker every interaction. The compliance layer is just as misaligned. There is no formal “Know Your Agent” framework yet, and existing AML systems can read legitimate high-frequency, low-value agent activity as suspicious structuring. The infrastructure is not just incomplete; it is focused on the wrong subject.What’s needed to solve this
Agent identity needs infrastructure designed for machine-native participation from the start:- Verifiable agent identity that any counterparty can inspect and trust.
- Authorization frameworks that define what an agent is permitted to do, on whose behalf, and within what limits.
- Traceable delegation so downstream agents can act within inherited authority without breaking accountability.
- Persistent, transferable reputation that is not trapped inside a single platform.
- Compliance-ready auditability so regulatory adaptation does not require rebuilding the system later.
Benefits of building this on the Grid
The Grid combines permissionless participation, transparent on-chain logic, immutable auditability, and a stable identity primitive (see Entities and accounts) that maps cleanly onto agent identity.Verifiable credentials without centralized lookup
Every agent on the Grid is an entity with a stable on-chain address keyed to a public key. Counterparties can verify the agent’s address, signing key, and on-chain history directly, instead of relying on a private API or a platform-controlled directory.Composable agent permissions across different platforms
The principal-agent relationship on the Grid is modelled as a delegation: an on-chain record signed by the principal that scopes what the agent may spend, with whom, and until when. Permissions can extend through sub-agents in a way that is explicit, bounded, and traceable, which is what makes the nested-delegation problem tractable when the human principal is several hops removed. See the delegation primitive for the developer-facing surface.Transferable identity and reputation
An agent’s identity lives on the chain, not inside a vendor account. The history of payments and interactions tied to that entity moves with it across providers, applications, and front-ends, and is not erased when a platform changes its rules or shuts down.Compliance readiness before regulation catches up
If “Know Your Agent” standards emerge, infrastructure that already preserves authorization chains and immutable audit trails is positioned to meet new standards without restructuring around them.The on-chain identity primitives (entities, signed activations, and delegations) are available on DevNet today. A formal on-chain identity registry, structured KYA disclosures, and a published “Know Your Agent” schema are directional: the building blocks exist, the standardized formats around them do not yet. See network status.