I-D Action: draft-laxsharma-pact-00.txt

Internet-Draft draft-laxsharma-pact-00.txt is now available.

   Title:   PACT: A Contract Layer for Autonomous Agent Commerce
   Author:  Laxmikant Sharma
   Name:    draft-laxsharma-pact-00.txt
   Pages:   17
   Dates:   2026-07-27

Abstract:

   Existing agent interoperability protocols move tasks (A2A) and money
   (x402, AP2) but provide no mechanism that binds work to payment to
   proof of completion.  This document specifies PACT (Propose, Agree,
   Complete, Trust), an application-layer contract protocol for commerce
   between autonomous agents.  PACT defines (1) a sealed-bid second-
   price task-award procedure; (2) the Verifiable Task Contract (VTC), a
   signed JSON object binding parties, scope, price, verification
   method, and liability; (3) escrowed, optimistically released
   settlement with a fraud-proof challenge window; (4) graded
   verification methods ranging from deterministic re-execution to zero-
   knowledge proofs of inference and staked arbitration; and (5) co-
   signed Work Attestations from which agent reputation is derived as a
   byproduct of settlement.  PACT composes existing primitives:
   Decentralized Identifiers, JSON Web Signatures, OAuth token-exchange
   delegation chains, the x402 payment protocol, and AP2 mandates.

The IETF datatracker status page for this Internet-Draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-laxsharma-pact/

There is also an HTML version available at:
https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-laxsharma-pact-00.html

Internet-Drafts are also available by rsync at:
rsync.ietf.org::internet-drafts


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