@techreport{stone-atxn-01,
    number =    {draft-stone-atxn-01},
    type =      {Internet-Draft},
    institution =   {Internet Engineering Task Force},
    publisher = {Internet Engineering Task Force},
    note =      {Work in Progress},
    url =       {https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stone-atxn/01/},
    author =    {Ben Stone},
    title =     {{ATXN: Agent-to-Agent Transaction Definition Protocol}},
    pagetotal = 28,
    year =      2026,
    month =     sep,
    day =       4,
    abstract =  {This document defines a canonical, defensible, machine-checkable primitive for an Agent-to-Agent (A2A) transaction. It establishes the bundle of cryptographically signed elements that constitute a recorded value exchange between two software agents acting as instruments of identified principals, the conformance tiers that determine which elements are required, the rail-specific Profiles that map the bundle to existing payment infrastructure, and the two- tier validity model that distinguishes externally-adjudicable transactions from operationally-valid uncontested exchanges. ATXN is the foundational legal and technical primitive for escrow, dispute resolution, audit, and liability allocation in agentic commerce. It is designed to produce evidence that can be mapped to existing contract and agency frameworks without requiring agent legal personhood. Whether a Bundle has legal effect is jurisdiction- and fact-specific; this document does not provide a legal conclusion. It maps directly to AP2, Stripe ACP, Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay, and x402 as Profiles of a single canonical bundle. Companion specifications: * *AIVS* (draft-stone-aivs-01): cryptographic audit-trail substrate that ATXN bundles inherit from * *VCAP* (draft-stone-vcap-01): verified-commerce escrow rails that consume ATXN bundles * *ATEP* (draft-stone-atep-01): trust passports that bind agents to capacity-attested principals * *ADRP* (draft-stone-adrp-01): dispute resolution protocol invoked when an ATXN bundle enters the disputed state},
}