# AI Agents with Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.02841 ยท HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02841/ ## Key facts - Cited by 18 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 13 of its 18 references that are in the map. - First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2025. ## Placed in - LLM agents and tool use / [Agent threats, guardrails and governance](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-threats-guardrails-and-governance/) ## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13) - [Open Challenges in Multi-Agent Security: Towards Secure Systems of Interacting AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.02077/) (2025) - [Authenticated Delegation and Authorized AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09674/) (2025) - [TRiSM for Agentic AI: A Review of Trust, Risk, and Security Management in LLM-based Agentic Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04133/) (2025) - [A Survey of LLM-Driven AI Agent Communication: Protocols, Security Risks, and Defense Countermeasures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.19676/) (2025) - [A Novel Zero-Trust Identity Framework for Agentic AI: Decentralized Authentication and Fine-Grained Access Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19301/) (2025) - [Agent Network Protocol Technical White Paper](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00007/) (2025) - [Beyond DNS: Unlocking the Internet of AI Agents via the NANDA Index and Verified AgentFacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14263/) (2025) - [LOKA Protocol: A Decentralized Framework for Trustworthy and Ethical AI Agent Ecosystems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10915/) (2025) - [BlockA2A: Towards Secure and Verifiable Agent-to-Agent Interoperability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01332/) (2025) - [Seven Security Challenges in Cross-domain Multi-agent LLM Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23847/) (2025) - [Position: Collaborative Agentic AI Needs Interoperability Across Ecosystems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21550/) (2025) - [Towards Multi-Agent Economies: Enhancing the A2A Protocol with Ledger-Anchored Identities and x402 Micropayments for AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19550/) (2025) - [Governance of Ledger-Anchored Decentralized Identifiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16972/) (2025) ## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18) - [Dissociative Identity: Language Model Agents Lack Grounding for Reputation Mechanisms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30169/) (2026) - [Heartbeat-Bound Hierarchical Credentials: Cryptographic Revocation for AI Agent Swarms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.20704/) (2026) - [Who Governs the Machine? A Machine Identity Governance Taxonomy (MIGT) for AI Systems Operating Across Enterprise and Geopolitical Boundaries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.06148/) (2026) - [The Internet of Agentic AI: Communication, Coordination, and Collective Intelligence at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12835/) (2026) - [Trust Without Trusting: A Recomputable Trust Protocol for Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06738/) (2026) - [Infrastructure for the Agentic Web: Gap Analysis and Architecture from the Agentverse Platform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.20570/) (2026) - [SoK: When Safe Agents Fail Together: The Security of Multi Agent LLM Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.00595/) (2026) - [SoulAuth: An Actor-native Identity Architecture and Rust Reference Implementation for Humans and Long-lived AI Actors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11258/) (2026) - [Distributed Legal Infrastructure for a Trustworthy Agentic Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06884/) (2026) - [SS-ZKR: Spatial-Semantic Zero-Knowledge Routing for Privacy-Preserving Multi-Agent Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00962/) (2026) - [Soul Computing: A Theoretical Framework and Technical Architecture for Intelligent Agents with Independent Consciousness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10413/) (2026) - [InterSAGE: The Secure and Verifiable Interoperability Protocol for An Internet of Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.13030/) (2026) - [The Civilization Framework: Sovereign-Anchored Communication Between Personal Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03425/) (2026) - [LEGIT: Credentialing Protocol for Trustworthy AI Agent Marketplaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21325/) (2026) - [NostrAgent: A Decentralized Identity and Delegation Architecture for Sovereign Agentic Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22944/) (2026) - [When the Agent Becomes the Kernel: A Systematization of Security on the Path to AI-Native Operating Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23700/) (2026) - [Trust the Brand, Lose Control: How Identity Hijacks LLM Agent Orchestration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32635/) (2026) - [PANDA: A Decentralized Architecture with Flexible Orchestration for Scalable, Fault-Tolerant Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.38482/) (2026) ## Abstract (arXiv) A fundamental limitation of current LLM-based AI agents is their inability to build differentiated trust among each other at the onset of an agent-to-agent dialogue. However, autonomous and interoperable trust establishment becomes essential once agents start to operate beyond isolated environments and engage in dialogues across individual or organizational boundaries. A promising way to fill this gap in Agentic AI is to equip agents with long-lived digital identities and introduce tamper-proof and flexible identity-bound attestations of agents, provisioned by commonly trusted third parties and designed for cross-domain verifiability. This article presents a conceptual framework and a prototypical multi-agent system, where each agent is endowed with a self-sovereign digital identity. It combines a unique and ledger-anchored W3C Decentralized Identifier (DID) of an agent with a set of third-party issued W3C Verifiable Credentials (VCs). This enables agents at the start of a dialog to prove ownership of their self-controlled DIDs for authentication purposes and to establish various cross-domain trust relationships through the spontaneous exchange of their self-hosted DID-bound VCs. A comprehensive evaluation of the prototypical implementation demonstrates technical feasibility but also reveals limitations once an agent's LLM is in sole charge to control the respective security procedures.