Proposal: MCP Server Development Framework for ICP

Developers
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Recently, Japanese ICP community(ICP Japan Community) discussed the future of ICP. We’d like to share the details of that discussion below, but first, as it is closely related to the MCP discussion held within the DeAI Working Group, could you please give us an update on the latest developments?

Related Discussion: We noticed that the topics discussed in the meeting on August 14, 2025, are very similar to our proposal. You can find the details on GitHub:

https://github.com/DeAIWorkingGroupInternetComputer/DeAIWorkingGroupInternetComputer/tree/main/WorkingGroupMeetings/2025.08.14

※Incidentally, the meeting logs mention OAuth 2.0, but this could be a reference to the more modern OAuth 2.1 standard.

Below is a share of the discussion from the ICP Japan community. @yasuo @hokosugi @hude @mrnmkmn @mami participated in the discussion.

Background

During recent discussions within the ICP Japan community regarding the future direction of ICP and Caffeine AI, we identified a significant opportunity to position ICP as a leading platform for AI agent development. Our community believes that there’s tremendous potential in leveraging emerging AI infrastructure standards to create a competitive advantage for ICP.

Proposal

We propose that dfinity develop and provide an official MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server development framework for ICP, along with supporting infrastructure for MCP server deployment, discovery, and micropayment integration.

This framework should include:

  • Tools for easily creating MCP servers from existing ICP canisters

  • Automatic generation of MCP servers from JSDoc/RustDoc documentation

  • A marketplace/registry for MCP servers with built-in micropayment capabilities

  • Integration with Caffeine AI and other AI development tools on ICP

Why This Approach is Strategic for ICP

Alignment with Current Industry Trends

The AI development ecosystem is rapidly standardizing around MCP servers for agent-to-service communication. Major cloud providers like Cloudflare and Google are actively building MCP-compatible infrastructure, and the protocol is gaining widespread adoption across AI platforms. By positioning ICP as the premier platform for secure, decentralized MCP servers, we can capture significant developer mindshare in the emerging AI agent economy.

Leveraging ICP’s Unique Strengths

Security and Trust: Unlike traditional MCP servers that pose security risks when deployed remotely, ICP’s Wasm-based execution environment provides inherent sandboxing. This addresses the critical trust issue that currently limits remote MCP server adoption.

HTTP Outcalls: ICP’s unique ability to make HTTP requests from smart contracts makes it ideal for creating MCP servers that can interact with external APIs and services - a capability that other blockchain platforms lack.

Stable Structures: ICP’s persistent data storage eliminates the complexity of external database management that plagues traditional deployment solutions, making it easier to create stateful MCP servers.

Micropayments: The low-cost, high-speed transaction capabilities enable practical micropayment models for MCP server usage, creating sustainable economic incentives for developers.

Vision: The AI Agent Economy

This framework would enable ICP to become the infrastructure backbone for an autonomous AI agent economy where:

  • Agents can discover and pay for specialized services automatically

  • Developers can monetize their AI tools through micropayments

  • Complex workflows can be composed from multiple MCP servers

  • Agent-to-agent transactions happen seamlessly without human intervention

Rather than competing in oversaturated DeFi markets, this positions ICP at the forefront of the AI revolution, creating genuine utility that drives sustainable demand for ICP tokens.

Implementation Benefits

  • Developer Experience: Easier than traditional cloud deployment while providing better security guarantees

  • Network Effects: As more MCP servers deploy on ICP, the platform becomes more valuable for AI developers

  • Revenue Model: Transaction fees from micropayments create sustainable revenue streams

  • Differentiation: Establishes ICP as the “AI-native” blockchain platform

This proposal aligns with dom’s vision of creating genuine utility through technological excellence rather than financial engineering. By providing the infrastructure for the next generation of AI applications, ICP can establish a sustainable competitive moat while driving real demand for the ecosystem.

We believe this represents a significant opportunity to establish ICP’s leadership position in the intersection of blockchain and AI technologies.

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I’m the maintainer for current rust mcp sdk

I think what you ask already implement at least for protocol created by @yrgg
Prometheus Protocol, motoko sdk

We built some several example, even created video for educating

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Hey, welcome! Like @baolongt mentioned we have been working very hard the last several months on the same vision. So far we have an OAuth2.1 provider on chain that uses PKCE and dynamic client registration and is fully compliant with the latest MCP standard. It will give you an OAuth token with the users principal as the audience so you can do icrc 2 allowance based transactions. In addition, the motoko sdk and Prometheus app store support API keys which are also linked to the user principal id.

You can specify a frontend that hosts the OAuth flow so you can control which principal the user uses, for example the app store has its own OAuth consent flow so that users jwts will contain the same principal that users have on the app store, so now they can manage their allowances and balances from the app store.

The app store lets developers quickly create an MCP server and publish it, once it’s build is verified it is made available on the app store. You can create a ‘global’ instance which is a multi-tenant server, and users data is separated by their principal id, OR you can specify ‘provisioned’ and each user on the app store clicks ‘deploy’ and gets their own instance where they are set as the ‘owner’ of the canister.

The provisioned apps are pretty great, they let you create things like AI agent wallets and swap wrappers, or can give your AI agent a dedicated principal to interact with other canisters. On the app store you can set allowances for each app, and you can check and withdraw tokens from your servers. For example you can tell your agent to keep your token portfolio balanced and give it a ‘global’ public MCP server that exposes a list of tokens, and give it the swap MCP server (private, ‘provisioned’), and give it an allowance of 1k usdc and 1k ICP.

Here is icrc2 wallet MCP server: Prometheus Protocol | App Store

And ‘swap’ MCP server (currently just wraps kong swap): Prometheus Protocol | App Store

Anyway, it’s all up and running. Check it out and create a server. We’re paying $500 USD for each server that gets added to the platform in the next two weeks so we can drive adoption.

App Store: https://prometheusprotocol.org
Docs: https://docs.prometheusprotocol.org

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