Trustless Agents on ICP?

Developers
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Trustless Agents on ICP?

There’s ongoing discussions around Trustless Agents in web3 — defining how autonomous, verifiable agents can register identity, domains, and provide trustless services.

Most of the concerns they’re tackling (agent ID integrity, domain binding, expiry, safe discovery, reputation) map very naturally to the Internet Computer:

  • Canisters as Agents → persistent, upgradable smart contracts that already act as autonomous services.

  • Internet Identity → a built-in identity layer that makes signatures + expiry straightforward.

  • Chain Fusion → agents on ICP can operate cross-chain without trusted bridges.

  • HTTP outcalls → binding domains + endpoints to on-chain agents is already possible.

Where some chains wrestle with gas costs and unbounded arrays, ICP has cycle-based execution and can design scalable registry canisters. This opens the door to a native ICP standard for trustless agents, enabling verifiable AI agents, oracles, and autonomous services that plug directly into the wider ecosystem.

If ERC-8004 is “trustless agents for Ethereum,”, ICP can aid in that mission with trustless agents that can run natively, at scale.

Would love to hear the community’s thoughts — should we sketch an ICP Trustless Agents Standard?

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ICP is one of the top ranking blockchains that can handle trustless agents.
Even Google thinks so…

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Here are a few reasons why.

  1. Threshold ECDSA enables agents to control keys across multiple blockchains without exposing private keys, as the private key exists only as secret shares held by nodes with signatures computed without ever reconstructing the full key tECDSA. This perfectly complements ERC-8004’s Identity Registry by allowing agents to maintain verifiable, portable identities across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other ECDSA-based networks while remaining trustless. Each agent can control unlimited keys through different derivation paths tECDSA, enabling secure cross-chain operations that align with ERC-8004’s vision of censorship-resistant agent coordination across organizational boundaries.

  2. Native HTTPS Integration Without Oracles ICP canisters can directly make HTTPS outcalls to external APIs and web services without requiring oracle networks or trusted intermediaries. This enables trustless agents to interact with traditional web infrastructure, fetch real-world data, and integrate with existing systems while maintaining cryptographic verification - essential for ERC-8004 agents that need to operate across organizational boundaries and interact with off-chain services.

  3. Native Zero-Knowledge Proof Verification ICP canisters can directly verify complex zero-knowledge proofs on-chain without requiring computationally expensive Groth16 wrapping or Layer 2 solutions. This means ICME Lab’s JOLT-Atlas proofs for AI inference can be verified natively within ICP smart contracts, enabling real-time validation of agent computations without the gas costs and complexity of bridging ZK proofs to other networks. For ERC-8004’s Validation Registry, this creates a seamless pathway where agents can generate JOLT proofs off-chain and have them verified instantly on-chain, making cryptographic validation both practical and cost-effective for trustless agent coordination.

Curious about cutting edge trustless agents and the tech that supports them?
Let’s chat here or check out how they are used in Kinic!

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I forgot.

  1. Data storage. The IC does this very cheaply and well.. most use wonky DA layers or IPFS.
    On IC we can store data directly.