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VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols VCAP

By Belgravia Labs Standards Observatory · Last verified · 2 primary sources

VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols is an agentic-web standard (endpoint) at step 7, Pay, governed by IETF individual Internet-Draft; its status is "Active Internet-Draft". It answers: "How can two autonomous agent-run marketplaces settle a payment only once independent evidence shows the purchased work was actually delivered?" Implementation status is none found, last verified 2026-10-29.

Pay 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].

Overview

It does not define agent discovery or messaging itself, and it is an individual Internet-Draft (draft-stone-vcap-02), authored solely by Ben Stone of 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 draft header states Intended status: Informational (while the Datatracker stream field is (None) because no stream has adopted it).

The current version, -02, was last updated 2026-09-04 (initial -00 posted 2026-03-17), with an expiry date of 2027-03-08 under IETF's standard six-month draft-expiry rule [1]. SwarmSync.AI is the author's own agent-to-agent (A2A) marketplace (swarmsync.ai), which claims a proprietary reference implementation (NestJS backend, Conduit browser verification engine, and Stripe Connect Express settlement, with an interactive simulation on its homepage) and publishes a public specification repository with JSON schemas (github.com/swarmsync-ai/vcap-spec, last pushed 2026-06-14). A W3C AI-KR Community Group review note (published 2026-03-24) also discusses the draft, but no independent third-party marketplace, verifier, or agent client implementing VCAP was found as of 2026-10-29.

Discovery and probe

none published — the draft defines message formats and state machines for agent-to-agent settlement, not a discoverable site-level signal · none

none none
parse:     not applicable — no public endpoint to probe was located
on absent: No probe exists; this is an early-stage individual draft with no independent deployed implementation outside the author's own marketplace, so absence cannot be distinguished from non-adoption.

Not probed live: needs-credentials. VCAP credentials are presented during a payment, not published.

Instances

Every instance with its source is listed on the instances page.

See also

References

  1. 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.' — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-stone-vcap/ (2026-09-04) VERIFIED
  2. 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. — https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-stone-vcap-02.html (2026-09-04) VERIFIED

Verification log and errata

JSON · Markdown · OKF v0.2

Frequently asked questions

What is VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols?
VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols is an agentic-web standard (endpoint) at step 7, Pay, governed by IETF individual Internet-Draft; its status is "Active Internet-Draft". It answers: "How can two autonomous agent-run marketplaces settle a payment only once independent evidence shows the purchased work was actually delivered?" Implementation status is none found, last verified 2026-10-29.
What is the adoption and standardization status of VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols?
Active Internet-Draft (individual); Intended status: Informational (draft header; Datatracker stream status is None), governed by IETF individual Internet-Draft; not endorsed by the IETF, no working group, no formal standing in the IETF standards process. Implementation: none found. Version: draft-stone-vcap-02 (2026-09-04). Last verified 2026-10-29.
How does VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols compare to other pay protocols?
VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols is one of 17 standards at step 7, Pay (Settle the bill). It pairs with Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A), ERC-8183: Agentic Commerce, x402, Agent Payments Protocol (AP2). Every standard at this step is listed at https://agenticweb.wiki/category/pay/.