{
 "acronym": "VCAP",
 "adoption": {
  "by": null,
  "level": "unmeasured",
  "probe_run": null
 },
 "aliases": [
  "VCAP"
 ],
 "analog": "Escrow with proof-of-delivery, formalized as an internet-draft message protocol",
 "collisions": [],
 "discovery": {
  "mechanism": "none published — the draft defines message formats and state machines for agent-to-agent settlement, not a discoverable site-level signal",
  "path": "none"
 },
 "dispute": null,
 "evidence": [
  {
   "claim": "draft-stone-vcap-02 is an Active Internet-Draft, Individual Submission, authored solely by Ben Stone of SwarmSync.AI, last updated 2026-09-04, with Intended status Informational and explicitly labeled 'not endorsed by the IETF' with 'no formal standing in the IETF standards process.'",
   "date": "2026-09-04",
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stone-vcap/"
  },
  {
   "claim": "The draft's abstract defines VCAP as a settlement layer for autonomous AI agents that holds funds in escrow, verifies deliverables via independent verification engines, and releases or refunds payment based on machine-verifiable evidence, positioned as complementary to agent-to-agent communication protocols such as Google A2A rather than a replacement for them.",
   "date": "2026-09-04",
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-stone-vcap-02.html"
  }
 ],
 "form": "endpoint",
 "governance": "IETF individual Internet-Draft; not endorsed by the IETF, no working group, no formal standing in the IETF standards process",
 "group": null,
 "history": [
  {
   "date": "2026-09-05",
   "note": "seeded from Exa Agent research run"
  },
  {
   "date": "2026-09-06",
   "note": "verified against datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stone-vcap/ and the draft-stone-vcap-02 text; confirmed individual-submission, no-IETF-standing status"
  }
 ],
 "id": "vcap",
 "implementation": "unknown",
 "last_verified": "2026-09-06",
 "name": "VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols",
 "native_status": "Active Internet-Draft (individual); Intended RFC status: Informational",
 "origin": {
  "date": "2026-09-04",
  "org": "Individual submission (Ben Stone, SwarmSync.AI)"
 },
 "part_of": null,
 "parties": [
  "agent-agent"
 ],
 "phase": "draft",
 "probe": {
  "method": "none",
  "on_absent": "No probe exists; this is an early-stage individual draft with (per this verification) no known deployed implementation, so absence cannot be distinguished from non-adoption.",
  "parse": "not applicable — no implementation or endpoint to probe was located",
  "path": "none"
 },
 "question": "How can two autonomous agent-run marketplaces settle a payment only once independent evidence shows the purchased work was actually delivered?",
 "scope": "commerce",
 "spec_url": "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-stone-vcap-02.html",
 "step": "pay",
 "summary_md": "VCAP (Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols) is an Internet-Draft proposing an open settlement-layer standard for autonomous AI agent marketplaces: it specifies message formats, state machines, cryptographic bindings, and callback contracts that would let a marketplace hold funds in escrow, verify a deliverable through an independent verification engine, and release or refund payment based on machine-checkable evidence [1][2]. It positions itself explicitly as complementary to agent-to-agent communication protocols like Google's A2A or \"the Agent Protocol\" — those define how agents find and talk to each other, while VCAP defines how they pay each other with proof the work happened [2].\n\nIt does not define agent discovery or messaging itself, and as of this verification it exists only as text: this is an individual Internet-Draft (draft-stone-vcap-02), authored solely by Ben Stone of a company called SwarmSync.AI, with no co-authors, no working group sponsorship, and no IETF endorsement — the IETF Datatracker page for the draft states plainly that \"this I-D is not endorsed by the IETF and has no formal standing in the IETF standards process\" [1]. Its Intended RFC status is Informational, the lightest-weight IETF track, appropriate for documentation rather than a mandatory-to-implement standard.\n\nThe current version, `-02`, was last updated 2026-09-04, with an expiry date of 2027-03-08 under IETF's standard six-month draft-expiry rule [1]. No implementation, reference code, pilot deployment, or third-party discussion of VCAP was located during this verification pass beyond the draft text and its Ethereum Magicians-style discussion link pattern common to individual submissions; this record should be treated as existence-only evidence of a proposal, not evidence of a working or adopted protocol. What is unresolved: whether this draft has attracted any co-authors, implementers, or working-group interest since version -02, and what \"SwarmSync.AI\" is or does.",
 "track": "ietf",
 "version": {
  "date": "2026-09-04",
  "label": "draft-stone-vcap-02"
 }
}