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VCAP: Verified Commerce for Agent Protocols VCAP

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 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.

The 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.

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 implementation or endpoint to probe was located
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.

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

History

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

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