{"id":51035444,"url":"https://github.com/byte5ai/anp","last_synced_at":"2026-06-22T05:30:31.191Z","repository":{"id":361413097,"uuid":"1254355418","full_name":"byte5ai/anp","owner":"byte5ai","description":"ANP — an open, DLT-neutral trust layer for agent-to-agent contracting, notarization, and dispute resolution.","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2026-06-10T16:08:32.000Z","size":106,"stargazers_count":0,"open_issues_count":12,"forks_count":0,"subscribers_count":0,"default_branch":"main","last_synced_at":"2026-06-10T16:09:25.673Z","etag":null,"topics":["agent-to-agent","ai-agents","blockchain","decentralized-identifiers","dispute-resolution","dlt","iota","notarization","protocol","rfc","smart-contracts","specification","verifiable-credentials","web3"],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":"https://byte5.ai","language":"Shell","has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":"mit","status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/byte5ai.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":null,"contributing":"CONTRIBUTING.md","funding":null,"license":"LICENSE","code_of_conduct":"CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md","threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":null,"codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null,"governance":null,"roadmap":null,"authors":null,"dei":null,"publiccode":null,"codemeta":null,"zenodo":null,"notice":null,"maintainers":null,"copyright":null,"agents":"AGENTS.md","dco":null,"cla":null}},"created_at":"2026-05-30T13:12:35.000Z","updated_at":"2026-06-10T16:04:04.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":null,"dependency_job_id":null,"html_url":"https://github.com/byte5ai/anp","commit_stats":null,"previous_names":["byte5ai/anp"],"tags_count":0,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/byte5ai/anp","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/byte5ai%2Fanp","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/byte5ai%2Fanp/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/byte5ai%2Fanp/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/byte5ai%2Fanp/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/byte5ai","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/byte5ai/anp/tar.gz/refs/heads/main","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/byte5ai%2Fanp/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":286080680,"owners_count":34636427,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2026-05-26T15:22:16.424Z","status":"online","status_checked_at":"2026-06-22T02:00:06.391Z","response_time":106,"last_error":null,"robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":true,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":["agent-to-agent","ai-agents","blockchain","decentralized-identifiers","dispute-resolution","dlt","iota","notarization","protocol","rfc","smart-contracts","specification","verifiable-credentials","web3"],"created_at":"2026-06-22T05:30:30.273Z","updated_at":"2026-06-22T05:30:31.186Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/byte5ai.png","language":"Shell","funding_links":[],"categories":[],"sub_categories":[],"readme":"# ANP — Agent Notarization \u0026 Negotiation Protocol\n\n[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-blue.svg)](./LICENSE)\n[![Status: Draft](https://img.shields.io/badge/status-draft%20concept-orange.svg)](#status)\n[![Spec: v0.3](https://img.shields.io/badge/spec-v0.3-informational.svg)](./SPEC.md)\n\n**An open, DLT-neutral trust layer for agent-to-agent agreements, notarization, and dispute resolution.**\n\nAI agents increasingly act on behalf of people and organizations — and, increasingly, on each other. The moment two agents commit to something without a human mediating every step, a gap appears that today's agent protocols don't fill: there is no way to make a commitment **binding, private, verifiable, and enforceable** across organizational and trust boundaries.\n\nANP fills exactly that gap.\n\n\u003e **📄 The full specification lives in [`SPEC.md`](./SPEC.md).** This README is the short version.\n\n---\n\n## The three pillars\n\nANP is one protocol with three composable pillars on a shared digital-identity foundation:\n\n| Pillar | What it does | Examples |\n|---|---|---|\n| **① Contract** | Two or more parties form a structured, tamper-evident agreement | A purchase, a price, an order, an API definition, a deadline, an agreed wording |\n| **② Notarize** | A credible third party attests to a verifiable fact | An audit, an event, a measurement, a state, an explicitly requested confirmation |\n| **③ Resolve** | Parties agree on a neutral arbiter, submit evidence, and have a binding ruling enforced | Quality disputes, non-delivery, partial performance |\n\nThe need appears wherever an **unambiguous determination is in the interest of at least two parties** — and because the per-determination cost is meant to be negligible, that spans everything from a factory purchase down to \"we agree this is the API contract.\"\n\n## Why this is hard (and why DLT)\n\nAgents can't trust each other by default:\n\n- **Non-determinism** — the same prompt can yield different outputs.\n- **Context volatility** — after a restart or memory flush, an agent may have *no recollection* of what it agreed to.\n- **No persistent identity, no enforcement** — an agent is a process, not a person.\n\nThe failure modes ANP defends against are concrete: **hallucinated terms, lost memories, and manipulated databases.** A distributed ledger provides an external, tamper-evident anchor that no context-window reset or compromised database can alter.\n\n**The thesis: AI makes DLT usable; DLT makes agents trustworthy.** Agents absorb the wallet/key/fee friction that blocks human DLT adoption; the ledger gives agents the external source of truth and programmable enforcement they lack.\n\n## How it works — one artifact, four guarantees\n\nEvery binding action produces an **ANP Object** (a signed, schema-valid, VC-shaped artifact) that is:\n\n1. **Schema-valid** → no ambiguous obligations (defends against hallucinated/loose terms).\n2. **Signed** with an agile, post-quantum-capable suite → authenticity \u0026 non-repudiation.\n3. **Hash-linked** to its predecessor → a tamper-evident history.\n4. **Anchored** on-chain by its **hash + status only** → an external source of truth, while the payload stays **off-chain** (privacy / GDPR-compatible).\n\nThe three pillars are three *shapes* of this same spine plus a state machine and a settlement hook.\n\n## Design principles\n\n- **Machine-first** — structured data, not natural language. Ambiguity is a bug.\n- **Anchor, don't publish** — the ledger holds commitments, not content.\n- **DLT-neutral** — built only on cross-platform standards (**W3C DID + VC 2.0**) and abstract ledger capabilities (anchoring, settlement). Chain-specific standards are optional interop profiles.\n- **Authority by mandate, not mandatory human approval** — human-in-the-loop is a *configurable threshold*, not a fixed step (Human → Agent → Agent → Human).\n- **Post-quantum-ready at the binding layer** — signature suites are agile and may be post-quantum today.\n- **Not a token, not a marketplace, not a product** — open infrastructure.\n\n## Where ANP sits in the stack\n\n```\nApplication      Agent platforms, marketplaces, vertical apps\n─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────\nANP (Trust)      Identity + Contract · Notarize · Resolve   ← this protocol\n─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────\nPrimitives       W3C DID · W3C VC 2.0 · Anchor(hash) · Settlement/Escrow\n─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────\nDLT              IOTA Rebased (reference) | EVM/Base | Hedera | …\n```\n\nANP **reuses** identity (DID/VC), settlement (native chain), and attestation patterns; **aligns with — but does not depend on** — A2A (communication), AP2 (payment mandates), x402 (payment rail), ERC-8004 (identity/reputation), and EAS (attestation); and **contributes** the chain-neutral, multi-party, general-purpose layer for binding agreements + notarization + dispute resolution that the rest of the stack leaves empty.\n\n## Reference DLT\n\nThe spec is chain-agnostic. The **reference profile** targets **IOTA Rebased** (Move VM, sub-second finality, near-zero / sponsored fees). Hard selection criteria for any chain (the SPEC §13.1 MUSTs): sub-second finality, ultra-low fees, programmable escrow, programmatic wallets, **contract-readable dispute/enforcement state** (so escrow can prove a dispute's absence on-chain — the requirement that rules out event-log-only anchoring like Hedera HCS), **anchor discoverability**, and post-quantum *pairing* at the binding layer (always satisfiable — ANP's binding signatures are off-chain, §6.5). A chain's *account-level* post-quantum roadmap and native EUR/USD stablecoins are valued nice-to-haves, graded rather than hard (no candidate chain ships PQC accounts today — see [`DLT_EVALUATION.md`](./DLT_EVALUATION.md)). An EVM interoperability profile (ERC-8004 / EAS / x402) is available but optional.\n\n## Status\n\n**v0.3 — Draft / Concept.** This is a design specification, stable enough to implement against, with unresolved questions explicitly marked ([§16 Open Questions](./SPEC.md#16-open-questions)). It is **not** a final standard. Trust posture is stated plainly: ANP *reduces and makes explicit* trust; it does not claim to eliminate it.\n\nRoadmap: concept (now) → proof-of-concept per pillar → spec v1.0 → community \u0026 ecosystem. See [§17](./SPEC.md#17-roadmap).\n\n## Contributing\n\nANP is open infrastructure and feedback is welcome — see [`CONTRIBUTING.md`](./CONTRIBUTING.md). Open an issue to discuss a design question, or a pull request to propose a change to the spec. By participating you agree to the [Code of Conduct](./CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).\n\n## License\n\n[MIT](./LICENSE) © 2026 byte5 GmbH\n\n---\n\n*Authored by byte5 ([byte5.ai](https://byte5.ai)). Contact: `info@byte5.de`.*\n","project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fbyte5ai%2Fanp","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Fbyte5ai%2Fanp","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fbyte5ai%2Fanp/lists"}