mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Trustless Autonomy: Understanding Motivations, Benefits, and Governance Dilemmas in Self-Sovereign Decentralized AI Agents

arXiv 2505.09757 ↗First posted 14 May 2025cs.HC cs.AI cs.CYcited by 10

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance

Abstract (arXiv)

The recent trend of self-sovereign Decentralized AI Agents (DeAgents) combines Large Language Model (LLM)-based AI agents with decentralization technologies such as blockchain smart contracts and trusted execution environments (TEEs). These tamper-resistant trustless substrates allow agents to achieve self-sovereignty through ownership of cryptowallet private keys and control of digital assets and social media accounts. DeAgents eliminate centralized control and reduce human intervention, addressing key trust concerns inherent in centralized AI systems. This contributes to social computing by enabling new human cooperative paradigm "intelligence as commons." However, given ongoing challenges in LLM reliability such as hallucinations, this creates paradoxical tension between trustlessness and unreliable autonomy. This study addresses this empirical research gap through interviews with DeAgents stakeholders-experts, founders, and developers-to examine their motivations, benefits, and governance dilemmas. The findings will guide future DeAgents system and protocol design and inform discussions about governance in sociotechnical AI systems in the future agentic web.

Key facts. Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 46 of its 122 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 May 2025.

Builds on

46 of 122 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)4 May
  2. 2024Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training10 Jan

Other references · 44

  1. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
  2. 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
  3. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
  4. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
  5. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,988
  6. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,439
  7. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,063
  8. 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agentscited by 634
  9. 2024Understanding the planning of LLM agents: A surveycited by 421
  10. 2023Trustworthy LLMs: a Survey and Guideline for Evaluating Large Language Models' Alignmentcited by 401
  11. 2024Hallucination is Inevitable: An Innate Limitation of Large Language Modelscited by 332
  12. 2024TheAgentCompany: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Consequential Real World Taskscited by 326
32 more
  1. 2022Social Simulacra: Creating Populated Prototypes for Social Computing Systemscited by 301
  2. 2025Model Context Protocol (MCP): Landscape, Security Threats, and Future Research Directionscited by 265
  3. 2024LLM Agents Grounded in Self-Reports Enable General-Purpose Simulation of Individualscited by 249
  4. 2025Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey on Agentic RAGcited by 249
  5. 2023Large Language Model Alignment: A Surveycited by 243
  6. 2020Liquid Time-constant Networkscited by 161
  7. 2025Towards Scientific Intelligence: A Survey of LLM-based Scientific Agentscited by 98
  8. 2024From Individual to Society: A Survey on Social Simulation Driven by Large Language Model-based Agentscited by 82
  9. 2025Agentic AI for Scientific Discovery: A Survey of Progress, Challenges, and Future Directionscited by 77
  10. 2019Edge Intelligence: The Confluence of Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligencecited by 76
  11. 2024Large Language Model Agent in Financial Trading: A Surveycited by 60
  12. 2025Plan-Then-Execute: An Empirical Study of User Trust and Team Performance When Using LLM Agents As A Daily Assistantcited by 54
  13. 2023Charting the Sociotechnical Gap in Explainable AI: A Framework to Address the Gap in XAIcited by 33
  14. 2023How Trustworthy are Open-Source LLMs? An Assessment under Malicious Demonstrations Shows their Vulnerabilitiescited by 33
  15. 2025Real AI Agents with Fake Memories: Fatal Context Manipulation Attacks on Web3 Agentscited by 24
  16. 2025EmoAgent: Assessing and Safeguarding Human-AI Interaction for Mental Health Safetycited by 21
  17. 2022System Safety and Artificial Intelligencecited by 18
  18. 2019Privacy-Preserving Inference in Machine Learning Services Using Trusted Execution Environmentscited by 17
  19. 2025Eliza: A Web3 friendly AI Agent Operating Systemcited by 15
  20. 2024Decentralized Governance of Autonomous AI Agentscited by 12
  21. 2024The Future of HCI-Policy Collaborationcited by 8
  22. 2025Aligning to What? Limits to RLHF Based Alignmentcited by 8
  23. 2023A Taxonomy for Blockchain-based Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)cited by 6
  24. 2024Mapping the Design Space of Teachable Social Media Feed Experiencescited by 5
  25. 2024The Feasibility of a Smart Contract "Kill Switch"cited by 2
  26. 2024Incentivized Symbiosis: A Paradigm for Human-Agent Coevolutioncited by 2
  27. 2025Understanding Decentralized Social Feed Curation on Mastodoncited by 2
  28. 2018The Scalability of Trustless Trustcited by 1
  29. 2019Blockchain Games: A Surveycited by 1
  30. 2023Decentralized Governance for Virtual Community(DeGov4VC): Optimal Policy Design of Human-plant Symbiosis Co-creationcited by 1
  31. 2023SoK: A Systematic Review of TEE Usage for Developing Trusted Applicationscited by 1
  32. 2025Trust and Friction: Negotiating How Information Flows Through Decentralized Social Mediacited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 7.

10 papers.

  1. 2025BetaWeb: Towards a Blockchain-enabled Trustworthy Agentic Webcited by 7
  2. 2025Spore in the Wild: A Case Study of Spore.fun as an Open-Environment Evolution Experiment with Sovereign AI Agents on TEE-Secured Blockchainscited by 6
  3. 2026AESP: A Human-Sovereign Economic Protocol for AI Agents with Privacy-Preserving Settlementcited by 3
  4. 2026Self-Sovereign Agentcited by 2
  5. 2025Intelligent System of Emergent Knowledge: A Coordination Fabric for Billions of Mindscited by 0
  6. 2026Distributed Legal Infrastructure for a Trustworthy Agentic Webcited by 0
  7. 2026Is Decentralized AI Governable? From Regulative Policy to Constitutive Protocolcited by 0
  8. 2026EmoDistill: Offline Emotion Skill Distillation for Language Model Agents in Adversarial Negotiationcited by 0
  9. 2026Agent Inheritance Protocol: Speculating on Feralized Agents After Principals Diecited by 0
  10. 2026Afterlife Delegation Protocol: Speculative Design of Self-Sovereign Agents that Outlive Their Principalscited by 0

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  1. 2026The Agent Economy: A Blockchain-Based Foundation for Autonomous AI Agents
  2. 2026Blockchain Empowered Trustworthy Agent Networks: Foundations, Taxonomy, and Future Directions
  3. 2026NostrAgent: A Decentralized Identity and Delegation Architecture for Sovereign Agentic Systems
  4. 2025From Cloud-Native to Trust-Native: A Protocol for Verifiable Multi-Agent Systems
  5. 2026Blockchain-Enabled Artificial Intelligence and AI Agents for Secure Data Sharing and Cybersecurity Applications
  6. 2026Sovereign Agents: Towards Infrastructural Sovereignty and Diffused Accountability in Decentralized AI
  7. 2026Verifiable Agentic Infrastructure: Proof-Derived Authorization for Sovereign AI Systems
  8. 2026Neuro-Symbolic Participation Governance for Verifiable AI Agents in Open Digital Twin Ecosystems