51 Agentic Economy Definitions

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A

Agent-Assisted Human Commerce

15 definitions

Microsoft Research

Rothschild, Mobius, Hofman et al.

Assistant agents act on behalf of consumers and service agents represent businesses, interacting pro…

Stripe / OpenAI

Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

Checkout flows where an AI agent discovers a product for a human and pays via Stripe's Shared Paymen…

Google / Shopify / Walmart

Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Full commerce lifecycle -- discovery, comparison, checkout, post-purchase -- with the agent navigati…

Google / Mastercard / PayPal

OAuth-based payments allowing agents to purchase on behalf of their human owners using saved payment…

"Agentic Ready" program

Agent-initiated payments via tokenization and biometric verification, tied back to human cardholders…

Agentic Tokens with spend limits set by the human, issued to AI agents via passkeys.

"The End of Inertia"

Agents break the "consumer inertia dividend" -- profits derived from humans failing to optimize -- w…

"What Is Agentic Commerce?"

AI agents act on behalf of consumers or businesses to research, negotiate and complete purchases.

AI agents embedded in CRM workflows to assist human buyers and sellers through existing sales proces…

AI agents assisting financial advisors and clients with product discovery and transaction execution.

AI-powered personalization agents for e-commerce, optimizing product recommendations and checkout fo…

commerce context

AI agents acting on our behalf -- shopping, negotiating, executing purchases.

Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)

Agents need to transact with businesses and one another -- M2M payments on Visa/Stripe rails, fiat +…

"Own the Workflow, Not the App"

Intents become interfaces, agents become default delegates, workflows become the product.

Alibaba / Alipay

Agentic Commerce Trust Protocol

Four-domain framework — Delegated Authorisation, Commercial Interaction, Payment Service, Trust Serv…

B

Agent-as-Workforce

8 definitions

100 million agents by 2028. 33% of enterprise apps will include agentic AI. 15% of day-to-day busine…

Sequoia Capital

Bob McGrew, ex-OpenAI CTO

Agents will be commoditized and priced at compute costs due to near-infinite supply. Services shift…

Sequoia Capital

Konstantine Buhler

An agent economy is one in which agents don't just communicate information -- they transfer resource…

"Agentic Enterprise"

Agents as autonomous partners inside organizations, making multi-step decisions without human approv…

Capgemini / OECD

1.7x ROI on AI operations. 21% of organizations running multi-agent systems.

Vilnius University

Agents divide responsibilities, coordinate tasks, cross-check each other's work inside enterprise wo…

Pascal Bornet et al.

"Self-Running Businesses"

AI as entrepreneur -- businesses that operate with minimal human involvement.

"Year of the Agentic Workforce"

Vertical-specific agents as workers -- legal, medical, compliance. Outcome-based pricing per vertica…

C_cr

Autonomous A2A Commerce (Blockchain)

13 definitions

Fetch.ai / ASI Alliance

"Machine Economy" -- agents negotiate, trade, and deliver services using FET/ASI tokens with self-cu…

Agent economies where agents hire and sell services to each other, governed by on-chain DAO mechanis…

Coinbase / Cloudflare

HTTP 402 status code + stablecoin micropayments. Account-less, subscription-free, pay-per-use.

Nanopayments testnet

Gas-free USDC transfers down to $0.000001. Off-chain aggregation, batched on-chain settlement.

EVM-compatible Layer 1 specifically for agentic payments. "Know Your Agent" (KYA) framework with hie…

Four-layer Machine Economy framework: infrastructure, identity, economic, governance. Settlement via…

Ken Huang & Lisa Tan

"The AI Agent Economy"

Token economies incentivizing agent behavior. Virtuals, AI16z, and Token-of-Things as examples. Dece…

"The Agent Economy: A Blockchain-Based Foundation"

Five-layer architecture: physical infrastructure (DePIN), identity (W3C DIDs), cognition (RAG + MCP)…

"Agentic Process Automation" -- autonomous businesses with DID-based identity and crypto/fiat settle…

Bosch / IOTA / BearingPoint

"Machine Economy" via IoT + distributed ledger technology. The historical precursor -- machines payi…

Natural language commands routed to DeFi across 60+ chains. MCP integration for agent-to-DeFi intera…

Zetrix AI / CAICT Astron

Avatar Protocol

A blockchain-AI trust layer where each user runs a verified 'avatar' — a bonded identity tied to ver…

Minghui Xu (arXiv 2602.14219)

The Agent Economy: A Blockchain-Based Foundation

An Agent Economy is a blockchain-based foundation in which autonomous AI agents operate as economic…

C_s

Autonomous A2A Commerce (Non-Crypto)

1 definition

BotNode / VMP-1.0

Dechamps Otamendi

Agents with own currency ($TCK), escrow-backed settlement, quantitative reputation (CRI 0-100), and…

D

Analytical and Regulatory

9 definitions

World Economic Forum

"Trust Is the New Currency"

Three trust domains: human-to-human, human-to-agent, agent-to-agent. Trust is the fundamental constr…

Bank of International Settlements

"Agentic Finance" -- the Agentic Financial Market Model (AFMM). Four-layer architecture: perception,…

a16z Crypto / YC / Medium

sovereign framing

Agents as sovereign actors. AI-native banks. Agents that own assets, sign contracts, and execute tra…

Macroeconomic consensus

If Category B agents replace enough workers, wages collapse, consumer demand collapses. If demand co…

"Unleashing the Autonomous Economy"

Frames the agent economy through Crossmint, Olas, and on-chain rails. Mentions ACK-ID, Nevermined ID…

Argoz Consultants

"The Rise of the Machine Economy"

Machines negotiate, trade, and transact without human oversight.

MIT Technology Review EmTech

"The Dawn of the Agent Economy"

Trillions of AI agents as buyers, sellers, collaborators. NANDA building the "DNS of the agentic web…

Microsoft Research (arXiv 2603.25893)

Agentic Markets

Agentic markets are two-sided markets in which consumers and businesses are assisted by AI tools tha…

Nannini et al. (arXiv 2604.04604)

AI Agents Under EU Law

AI agents already meet the EU AI Act's AI-system definition. A compliance architecture can be assemb…

E

Infrastructure and Standards

11 definitions

Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A)

Agent discovery and communication. Agents publish Agent Cards at /.well-known/agent.json, exchange t…

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

A standard for LLMs to discover and invoke external tools. Focused on tool interoperability.

Trulioo / Worldpay / Skyfire

KYA Infrastructure

"Digital Agent Passport" -- Know Your Agent identity verification for autonomous agents.

Standard for terms and agreements between autonomous entities.

Forrester / Exista.io

Agent Discovery Optimization (ADO)

SEO is for humans. ADO is for agents. A brand invisible to agents is invisible to the agentic econom…

Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols (VCAP)

Cryptographic proof of work delivery for agent commerce. IETF standardization track.

"Agentic AI: Landscape and Conceptual Foundations"

Working paper on terminology and regulatory framing for agentic AI systems.

Keycard investment

The identity layer for the agent economy. Finding: non-human identities outnumber human employees 96…

"Conceptualizing the Machine Economy"

The complete integration and participation of economically autonomous acting machines in economic pr…

Verify-then-Pay Infrastructure for Trusted Agentic Commerce. Escrow + TEE/TLS verification.

AIS-1 (ais-1.org)

AIS-1 Agent Identity Standard

A bonded dual-identity token on-chain that permanently links an AI agent's identity to the legal ent…