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How the internet should establish who or what is acting: human control, AI agent authority, attestations and privacy.
A complete trust model for AI agents and humans online: Actor states, a ten-layer trust stack, attestations and policy for human and AI agent trust at scale.
Proof of Actor Research · October 14, 2026
What is agentic commerce? A clear definition, the trust questions merchants face with AI shopping agents, and how delegated authority and explicit intent help.
Authentication vs authorization explained clearly, with a comparison table, plus the third question modern services now face: who or what is actually acting.
A technical guide to actor attestation: claims, confidence, freshness, selective disclosure, agent delegation and the trust receipt a relying party consumes.
Non-human identity covers service accounts and API keys. AI agent identity needs more: a model that separates humans, AI-assisted humans and authorised agents.
Proof of personhood and human verification ask whether a real human exists. Proof of Actor also asks who is present, in control, using AI or authorised to act.
AI agent security needs more than identity. Why delegation, scope of authority, revocation and accountability form the missing trust layer for AI agents.
Know Your Agent (KYA) must prove more than which agent is acting. A comparison of KYC, KYB and KYA, and the six claims a useful KYA check should establish.
Human control verification produces evidence that a human is actually controlling a specific digital interaction. How it differs from human in the loop design.
Proof of Actor is proposed actor trust infrastructure that establishes whether a human, a human using AI or an AI agent is acting, and who authorised it.
Why a CAPTCHA alternative alone cannot solve the AI agent problem: a single challenge cannot establish human control, continuity or delegated authority.
