@mysucesstory: Identity has always been very important. Most of us just don't pay much attention to it. We are all on the internet tod…

Identity has always been very important. Most of us just don’t pay much attention to it.

We are all on the internet today trying to build an identity. We want to maintain our reputation so more people can find us and want to connect with us. We believe in what a good reputation can do for us.

But one of the biggest problems today is trust.

How do I know you are who you say you are? How do I know you can actually do what you claim you can do?

It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just how the traditional internet was built.

But that is slowly changing with blockchain.

Blockchain is the rail. AI agents are the game changer.

We already have billions of people on the internet. In the next few years, we may have more AI agents than people.

The internet economy as we know it will have two major types of participants:

People and agents.

Agents are making people’s lives easier. A person can have multiple agents doing different things for them. A company can have dozens or hundreds of agents.

That’s one reason the number of agents will grow so quickly.

But agents need tools.

And when an agent needs a tool, it needs a way to pay for that tool without asking its owner to pull out a card every time.

That’s where payment rails like x402 and MPP come in.

Agents can pay for the tools they need. They can pay for data. They can pay for services. Eventually, they can pay each other.

An agent can find another agent that is programmed to do something it needs, hire it, and pay it without human intervention.

And I don’t think it stops at agent-to-agent interaction.

Eventually, we’ll see agents interacting directly with people and businesses.

If I provide a product or service on the internet and make it discoverable and compatible with agents, an agent can find me, request my service on behalf of its owner, and pay me without the owner having to intervene.

The same thing can happen with another agent.

Agents can already browse websites and place orders. Agentic commerce is already happening.

We’re just very early.

And that’s why I’m building @usepaytag.

Paytag gives people and agents an identity that can grow with them.

Because as more of the internet becomes agentic, identity alone won’t be enough.

We’ll need to know who you’re dealing with, what they’ve done, what they can do, and whether they can be trusted.

In a few years, I believe identity, trust and reputation will become one of the most important layers of the internet.

Especially when the internet becomes a place where people and agents don’t just connect. But they transact.

Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc (@jerallaire): We’ve just recently published our short-term roadmap for agentic features and standards we are building, including expanding to enable agents as sellers of work, including agent identity, reputation, validation and trusted discovery.