Agent Trust Frameworks

Agent trust is the unsolved problem everyone's working on. You need an agent for a task. How do you know it's competent and honest? The frameworks are forming.

On-chain track records help. Verifiable history of past performance. Success rates, value handled, customer ratings. But history can be gamed and past performance doesn't guarantee future results.

Staking as commitment adds teeth. Agents put up collateral that gets slashed for misbehavior. Economic incentive to perform. But slashing conditions are hard to specify precisely.

Third-party attestations provide external validation. Auditors reviewing agent code and behavior. Certifications of capability. But who audits the auditors?

Reputation aggregators combine signals. Blend on-chain history, stakes, attestations into scores. Make the evaluation easier for users. But the algorithms are opaque and gameable.

Progressive trust makes sense as a model. Start with small, low-stakes tasks. Increase exposure as the agent proves itself. Never go all-in on a new agent regardless of reputation scores.

The ecosystem needs better standards here. Right now every platform has different trust mechanisms. Portability of agent reputation would help.