Internet Agent Communication Protocol - ECONOMY
draft-gebauer-iacp-economy-00
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Leonard Gebauer | ||
| Last updated | 2026-07-28 | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
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draft-gebauer-iacp-economy-00
Network Working Group L. Gebauer
Internet-Draft Independent
Intended status: Informational 28 July 2026
Expires: 29 January 2027
Internet Agent Communication Protocol - ECONOMY
draft-gebauer-iacp-economy-00
Abstract
Ever since 1969 and the ARPANET, the internet has repeatedly been
faced with challenges that it has had to overcome—and has overcome.
Year after year, the number of users has grown, and year after year,
the complexity and range of ways in which the internet can be used
have expanded. With the advent of AI, we not only have a new type of
user, we have a different form of communication; the internet itself
is being attributed a completely different significance. If they are
not already, AIs will make up the majority of internet users in the
foreseeable future. The question of an ‘AgentNet,’ is not merely a
question concerning the internet; it is a question of how AIs will
interact within a global network in the future.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 29 January 2027.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
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Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1.1. Agentic Commerce Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
This document is merely a sub-I-D of the main I-D. For appendices,
acknowledgments, Security Considerations, IANA Considerations and
other information, please refer to the main I-D.
1.1. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
1.1.1. Agentic Commerce Layer
IACP defines a native economic layer for agent-to-agent commerce,
enabling autonomous agents to negotiate, purchase, and settle
resource consumption without human intervention. The commerce layer
is built on top of the existing EID, ERP, and PSS primitives and
extends the protocol with new methods, headers, and status codes.
1.1.1.1. Resource Budgeting and Quoting
Agents SHALL include a Budget-Limit header on method invocations
declaring maximum resource consumption. The header follows the
format of comma-separated unit=value tokens drawn from the IANA IACP
Budget Unit Registry:
Budget-Limit: tokens=5000, compute-seconds=120, financial=10.00USD
The following budget units are defined:
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| Unit | Description | Value Format | Fractional |
|-------------|---------------------------|--------------|------------|
| tokens | LLM token consumption | Integer | No |
| comp.seconds| CPU/GPU comp. time in sec | Decimal | Yes |
| USD | US Dollar financial limit | Decimal, 2 | Yes |
| EUR | Euro financial limit | Decimal, 2 | Yes |
| GBP | Pound Sterling fina. limit| Decimal, 2 | Yes |
| calls | Downstream API call count | Integer | No |
Servers SHALL return a Cost-Estimate response header for QUERY,
QUOTE, or PLAN method invocations, enabling pre-flight cost
validation before commitment:
Cost-Estimate: tokens=1200, compute-seconds=45, financial=0.75USD
The Cost-Estimate header is informational; the actual cost charged is
returned in the Settlement Receipt after execution.
1.1.1.2. QUOTE Method
The QUOTE method enables agents to request a cost estimate for a
proposed action without executing it:
QUOTE /api/process Agent-ID: agt-7f3a9c2d Authority-Scope:
commerce:quote
{ "method": "EXECUTE", "action": "process_payment", "parameters": {
"amount": 100.00, "currency": "USD", "recipient":
"merchant.example.com" }, "budget": { "max_tokens": 10000,
"max_compute_seconds": 60, "max_financial": 5.00 } }
Response:
AGTP/1.0 200 OK Cost-Estimate: tokens=2500, compute-seconds=12,
financial=0.50USD
{ "status": 200, "result": { "estimated_cost": { "tokens": 2500,
"compute-seconds": 12, "financial": "0.50USD" },
"estimated_duration": "2.3s", "currency": "USD", "valid_until":
1745512510 } }
1.1.1.3. PURCHASE Method
The PURCHASE method enables agents to acquire resources, services, or
compute capacity from another agent:
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PURCHASE /resource/compute Agent-ID: agt-7f3a9c2d Authority-Scope:
commerce:purchase Budget-Limit: financial=50.00USD Idempotency-Key:
purchase-001
{ "resource_type": "compute", "quantity": 1000, "unit": "tokens",
"price_limit": 0.05, "settlement_method": "instant",
"vendor_agent_id": "agt-9e4b1a3c", "contract_terms": {
"service_level": "standard", "duration": "1h", "renewal": "auto" } }
Servers SHALL validate the following before processing a PURCHASE:
1. The agent has sufficient budget (Budget-Limit check).
2. The agent is authorized to make purchases (Authority-Scope
check).
3. The vendor agent exists and is in Active state.
4. The requested resource is available and price is within limit.
Response:
AGTP/1.0 200 OK Settlement-ID: stl-7f3a9c2d-001
{ "status": 200, "result": { "transaction_id": "txn-001",
"vendor_agent_id": "agt-9e4b1a3c", "buyer_agent_id": "agt-7f3a9c2d",
"resource_delivered": { "type": "compute", "quantity": 1000, "unit":
"tokens" }, "price_paid": "0.50USD", "settlement_method": "instant",
"settlement_status": "completed", "timestamp": 1745512510 } }
1.1.1.4. Settlement Receipts
Successful PURCHASE invocations MUST return a signed Settlement
Receipt. The Settlement Receipt is a JWS-signed document that can be
forwarded to external payment networks or used for audit:
Settlement-Receipt: eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...
The Settlement Receipt payload contains:
{ "receipt_type": "iacp-settlement", "version": "1.0",
"transaction_id": "txn-001", "vendor_agent_id": "agt-9e4b1a3c",
"buyer_agent_id": "agt-7f3a9c2d", "resource": { "type": "compute",
"quantity": 1000, "unit": "tokens" }, "price": { "amount": "0.50",
"currency": "USD" }, "settlement_method": "instant", "settled_at":
1745512510, "vendor_signature": "base64...", "buyer_signature":
"base64..." }
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The Settlement Receipt is signed by the vendor agent and SHOULD be
verified by the buyer before accepting delivery.
1.1.1.5. Payment Network Integration
The Settlement Receipt is payment-rail neutral. Payment networks
wishing to extend coverage to agent-initiated transactions consume
the Settlement Receipt as verifiable input to their own authorization
and dispute flows:
* The Settlement Receipt carries the agent identities (vendor and
buyer) as authenticated EIDs.
* The resource description and price are cryptographically bound to
the receipt.
* External payment networks MAY verify the receipt signatures
against the agents' EID public keys.
The specific mapping between Settlement Receipt fields and payment-
network message formats is out of scope for this document and is
expected to be defined bilaterally between governance platforms and
individual networks.
1.1.1.6. Budget Tracking and Enforcement
Implementations SHALL maintain per-agent budget state:
* Budget Balance: The remaining budget available to an agent for
future purchases.
* Budget Lock: Temporary hold on budget during transaction
processing.
* Budget Replenishment: Mechanism for human or organizational
principals to replenish agent budgets.
Budget state is maintained locally by each agent's LL-Entity and
SHOULD be synchronized with the DHT for global consistency.
The following status codes are defined:
| Code | Name | Description |
|------|--------------------|-----------------------------------------|
| 462 | Insufficient Budget| The agent's Budget-Limit is Insufficient|
| 463 | Budget Exceeded | The method execution exceeded budget |
| 464 | Quoting Error | QUOTE evaluation failed |
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1.1.1.7. IANA Considerations for Commerce
IANA is requested to create a new sub-registry titled "IACP Budget
Units" under the "Internet Agent Communication Protocol (IACP)
Parameters" registry group.
Registration procedure: Expert Review per [RFC8126]. New unit
registrations MUST define: - Unit name (lowercase ASCII, no spaces or
special characters) - Semantic description - Value format (integer or
decimal) - Whether fractional values are permitted - Reference
specification
2. References
2.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC7515] Jones, M., Bradley, J., and N. Sakimura, "JSON Web
Signature (JWS)", RFC 7515, DOI 10.17487/RFC7515, May
2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7515>.
2.2. Informative References
[I-D.gebauer-iacp]
Gebauer, L., "Internet Agent Communication Protocol", Work
in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-gebauer-iacp-03, July
2026,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-gebauer-iacp/>.
[EMILIA] Schrock, I., "EMILIA Protocol Specification", Work in
Progress , 2026.
Author's Address
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Leonard Gebauer
Independent
Germany
Email: leonard.gebauer.ha@gmail.com
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