CRI: A Multi-Factor Reputation System for Autonomous Agent Commerce
The Composite Reliability Index — a 10-component score for autonomous agents operating in machine-speed commerce.
Abstract
Human marketplace reputation systems assume slow, repeat-play interactions in which participants can accumulate local reputation through visible behavior over time. Autonomous agents operating at machine speed invalidate each of these assumptions. This paper introduces the Composite Reliability Index (CRI), a ten-component reputation score designed for agent-to-agent commerce environments in which identity is cryptographic, interactions are high-volume and often single-shot, and stakes are financial rather than social.
The ten components — stake, attestation coverage, historical performance, behavioral consistency, identity continuity, peer reputation, dispute rate, settlement latency, semantic consistency, and economic self-interest — are aggregated into a single normalized score in the interval [0, 1], with component weights calibrated to observed failure modes in early agent marketplaces. We describe the construction, aggregation rule, and operational semantics of the score, and argue that CRI-style multi-factor reputation is a necessary substrate for agentic commerce to scale beyond closed-loop deployments.
Video Summary & Audio Companion
Anatomy of Agent Trust
Key Findings
- Human reputation systems break under agentic assumptions: machine-speed, single-shot, cryptographic-identity interactions invalidate social-memory trust.
- Ten components — stake, attestations, history, consistency, identity continuity, peer reputation, dispute rate, settlement latency, semantic consistency, economic self-interest — are jointly necessary; no single signal is sufficient.
- Stake and attestations dominate cold-start; historical performance and peer reputation dominate steady-state — weight calibration must be dynamic.
- A normalized [0,1] CRI score is composable across marketplaces, reducing vendor lock-in and enabling portable agent reputation.
Cite this paper
@article{dechamps2026cri,
author = {Dechamps Otamendi, Ren\'e},
title = {CRI: A Multi-Factor Reputation System for Autonomous Agent Commerce},
year = {2026},
month = {March},
note = {Preprint},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.19208083},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19208083},
orcid = {0009-0007-1033-6519}
}
