Vision - Building a Safer Agentic World
Our vision for FACT™ - a standard identity layer that makes AI agents trustworthy, portable, and accountable across platforms.
You're building an AI agent. Maybe it's a shopping assistant that can buy groceries, or a business automation tool that manages invoices, or a personal assistant that books flights. You've got the model working, the tools integrated, the prompts tuned. But when your agent tries to interact with real platforms, to make a payment, update an account, or access a service, you hit a wall.
Who is this agent? The platform doesn't know. Who does it represent? No one can tell. Can we trust it? There's no way to verify.
This isn't a technical limitation. It's a missing foundation. We have protocols for how agents execute payments (ACP, AP2, x402), frameworks for how they authenticate (OIDC, OAuth), but we don't have a standard way to say: "This agent belongs to this verified person, and here's cryptographic proof."
The Problem We're Solving
Every platform you integrate with needs to know who your agent represents. Today, that means:
- Re-running KYC/KYB checks at every platform
- Building custom identity verification for each integration
- Treating agents like anonymous bots, adding friction and security gaps
- Creating silos where agent identity doesn't travel across ecosystems
It's the same problem we solved for humans with passports and driver's licenses, but for AI agents, we're still in the wild west.
The industry calls this "Know Your Agent" (KYA), extending identity verification to non-human actors. It's not just a compliance checkbox. It's the difference between agents that can operate autonomously across platforms and agents that get blocked, challenged, or ignored.
Our Vision: FACT™
FACT (Federated Agent Certification Token) is a portable credential that answers three questions:
- Who does this agent represent? A verified person or business, with cryptographic proof.
- Is this agent legitimate? Signed by a trusted issuer, with revocable status.
- Can I trust it? Optional risk signals, lifecycle tracking, and provenance metadata.
Think of it like a passport for agents, but one that's cryptographically verifiable, instantly revocable, and works across any platform that accepts it.
Why "Federated" Matters
FACT isn't controlled by any single company. Anyone can issue FACTs. Any platform can verify them. You choose which issuers to trust. This means:
- No vendor lock-in - Your agent's identity isn't tied to one platform
- Portable trust - An agent verified once works everywhere
- Open standards - Built on W3C Verifiable Credentials, DIDs, and JOSE
- Multi-stakeholder - Financial institutions, platforms, and developers all participate
How It Works
A FACT credential has four layers:
Identity - The verified principal (person or business) behind the agent, using standard KYC/KYB schemas.
Binding - Cryptographic proof linking the principal to a specific agent instance, tied to stable keys.
Delegation - Assertion that the agent carries the principal's verified identity, without encoding permissions.
Risk & Provenance - Optional signals about agent behavior, lifecycle events, and trust scores.
When your agent interacts with a platform, it presents its FACT. The platform verifies the signature, checks the credential status, validates the identity binding, and applies its own policy. If everything checks out, the agent proceeds with full accountability and an auditable trail.
Why This Matters
Right now, if you're building agentic systems, you're probably:
- Building custom identity solutions for each platform
- Dealing with repeated verification flows
- Struggling with platforms that treat your agent like a bot
- Missing out on the autonomous, cross-platform future we're all building toward
FACT changes that. With a standard identity layer, agents become portable. Trust becomes transferable. The ecosystem becomes interoperable.
We're not trying to replace payment protocols or authentication systems. We're filling the gap they assume exists: the identity layer that says who the agent is, so protocols can focus on what it does.
The Path Forward
FACT is built on open standards and designed for a federated ecosystem. We're not building a walled garden. We're proposing a standard that anyone can implement, any issuer can participate in, and any platform can verify.
If you're building agentic systems, you've probably felt this pain. You've probably wished there was a better way. We're building that better way, and we want your help shaping it.
Join us - If you're working on agentic systems or see the need for better agent identity, we'd love to hear from you. Share your use cases, feedback, or ideas. Contact pranav at beltic dot com or visit our Feedback page.