News GoDaddy, Infoblox, Google and Cloudflare have demonstrated how AI agents can securely complete transactions across independent online platforms using existing internet standards. Unveiled at GovWare 2026 during Singapore International Cyber Week, the Chain of Trust is an open reference architecture that enables organizations to discover, identify and authenticate AI agents throughout a transaction. The architecture was developed in collaboration with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), based on principles in its Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI (v1.5). AI agents are increasingly being used to search for products, compare prices and securely complete purchases for people and businesses. McKinsey & Co. estimates AI agents could facilitate $3 trillion to $5 trillion in global consumer purchases by 2030. But as AI-driven commerce grows, establishing trust across platforms remains a challenge. Today, most platforms independently verify agents using closed systems, leaving businesses with limited visibility into how an agent’s identity was verified or whether it can be trusted. These disconnected and sometimes incoherent approaches make it difficult to establish consistent, verifiable trust across the broader AI ecosystem. The Chain of Trust runs on the agentic open web. It connects layers of controls, each built on open standards and established internet protocols. A business can check an agent at every step, from discovery to payment to audit across platforms. The architecture gives organizations: • Trust. Every agent carries a unique, signed identity that any party can verify for itself on every transaction, enabling organizations to transact securely. • Control. No single platform decides which agents an organization can do business with: Businesses and governments choose which agents to trust, based on verifiable signals. A person sets what an agent may buy and how much it can spend in a signed Agent Payments GoDaddy, Infoblox, Google and Cloudflare Demonstrate Secure AI Agent Transactions Across Platforms Protocol (AP2) mandate, and merchants and payment providers can check every purchase against it. • Interoperability. Because the chain builds on infrastructure the internet already runs on, such as DNS, and on open standards, it works across platforms, clouds and agent protocols rather than only inside one vendor’s system. • Transparency. Every registration and every transaction is written to append-only logs, so any later change to a logged record is visible to anyone who checks it. Each layer is verified separately, so passing one check does not bypass the others. How the chain works Each layer of the architecture relies on an open standard: • Discovery. Leverages Agent Resources Discovery (ARD) for resource and capability discovery or DNS-AID for DNS-based lookup, to find which agents exist and where they run. • Identity. Establishes a registered identity that anyone can verify from public evidence, not just a certificate the agent presents in a single session (the open Agent Name Service standard, ANS, alongside the Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) for the identity of each running instance). • Authorization. Establishes who controls an agent and what it may do (OAuth). • Communication. Allows agents to reach tools and each other (Agent2Agent, or A2A, and the Model Context Protocol, or MCP). • Payment. Carries the person’s signed authorization and the agent’s identity into the checkout (AP2 and the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP). • Traceability. Records what happened and who is responsible in an append-only log, with a signed receipt that anyone can check offline (Supply Chain Integrity, Transparency and Trust). • Trust. Turns a verified identity into an evidence-based score computed from public attestations rather than self-description (the open Trust Index). Industry collaboration with Singapore’s IMDA shows how open internet standards can verify AI agent identities and establish trust throughout a financial transaction.
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