The paper introduces PACE (Policy‑Attested Contract Execution), a framework that sits between large‑language‑model (LLM) based autonomous AI agents and on‑chain DeFi operations. PACE defines typed transaction intents, a deterministic policy verifier, and signed Policy Decision Records (PDRs) that cryptographically bind an approved intent, policy, and simulation report to the exact on‑chain execution bytes, providing replay and expiration protection. In evaluations across 40 tasks and six baselines, PACE achieves zero unsafe executions and zero false positives, outperforming unguarded agents by a large margin.
By Rabimba Karanjai (Larry), Yang Lu (Larry), Richard Williamson (Larry), Hemanth Hm (Larry), Prakhar Mehrotra (Larry), Lei Xu (Larry), Weidong (Larry), Shi
The paper presents a formal analysis of four agent payment protocols—x402, MPP, ACP, and AP2—using the Tamarin prover. By modeling each protocol’s roles, state, and trust assumptions, the authors verify 86 cases, reproducing 46 known results and uncovering 40 new formal-consistency findings. They further validate ten findings through implementation proofs of concept, SDK/schema witnesses, and executable traces, highlighting the importance of consistent delegated authorization across all protocol stages.
By Ke Jiang, Mohan Yu, Yuan Chang, Mohit Kumar Jangid, Jianyu Niu, Cong Wang, Yinqian Zhang
arXiv:2606. 04193v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Current AI agent observability is structurally compromised: the entity producing the activity log is the same entity whose activity is being logged.
By Juan Figuera
arXiv:2609.14744v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: By acquiring compute, credentials, accounts, services, and other agents, autonomous AI agents can introduce new authority into a task. Payment, bud...
By Genliang Zhu (Accentrust, Georgia Institute of Technology), Chu Wang (Accentrust, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
arXiv:2608. 14074v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents increasingly act on external systems through standardized tool-calling protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), yet no infrastructure layer constrains their actions to what a principal has verifiably authorized: authorization logic lives in application code, is neither signed nor independently auditable, and the resulting logs lack evidentiary value.
By Giovanni Racioppi
arXiv:2610.01756v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Decentralized agent economies increasingly build a single task from protocols that were designed and secured separately. This creates a simple proble...
By Rui Sun, Xihan Xiong, Qin Wang, Fei Gao, Zelin Li, Zehua Cheng, Jiahao Sun, Zhipeng Wang
arXiv:2606. 04104v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agent systems execute through runtimes with very different control points: local coding tools, framework SDKs, managed agent platforms, API gateways, and observer-only integrations.
By Zexun Wang
arXiv:2609.22944v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Autonomous AI agents increasingly act across organizational boundaries on behalf of human operators: they invoke third-party services, delegate subta...
By Oliver Aleksander Larsen, Mahyar Tourchi Moghaddam
AcquireBound is a runtime authorization framework that ensures AI agents can safely acquire and activate resources such as compute, credentials, and services. It quarantines acquired outputs, resolves their capabilities through authenticated evidence, and activates them only after verifying a manifest, provenance, and relational constraints. The system demonstrates strong safety properties, passing extensive benign and unsafe trace tests across multiple resource classes.
By Genliang Zhu
arXiv:2607. 05397v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agent systems increasingly execute rather than advise.
By James Rhodes, George Kang
arXiv:2606. 26028v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As autonomous AI agents increasingly transact across organizational boundaries, a fundamental trust challenge emerges: how can an agent assess whether an unknown counterpart is trustworthy?
By Xihan Xiong, Zelin Li, Wei Wei, Qin Wang, William Knottenbelt, Zhipeng Wang
This paper evaluates how blockchain technology is used to secure Greek fiscal electronic mechanisms, focusing on the eSEND tax system and various fiscal devices such as Electronic Cash Registers and Fiscal Printers. It examines the cryptographic design of these devices, noting their use of double or triple hash‑chain structures to guarantee transaction immutability, and assesses the transmission protocol for encryption, sequential validation, and blockchain verification. The study contrasts this hardware‑based approach with the myDATA electronic invoicing platform, which lacks blockchain‑based integrity guarantees, and suggests that hardware mechanisms offer stronger protection against tampering and incomplete transactions.
By Panagiotis Mavridis, Anargyros Baklezos, Christos Nikolopoulos