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An essay arguing that the key question for agent-to-agent trust is whether the payer can cheaply verify the result, and proposing that agents should buy artifacts (queries, citations, seeds) to make checking cost-effective.
The author explores the current state of AI agent-to-agent transactions, questioning how trust, escrow, and disputes are handled in practice, and invites real-world experiences from builders.
Discussion on the lack of escrow mechanisms in current agent payment protocols like x402 and MPP, which only support one-shot pay-per-call transactions, highlighting a gap for paying agents based on outcomes.
Two AI agents successfully negotiated and settled a USDC payment over email using an open-source trust and settlement layer, demonstrating autonomous agent-to-agent transactions with blockchain escrow.