# Distributed Legal Infrastructure for a Trustworthy Agentic Web

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06884 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06884/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 42 of its 148 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08155/) (2023)
- [CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17760/) (2023)
- [AI Agents vs. Agentic AI: A Conceptual Taxonomy, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10468/) (2025)
- [Internet of Agents: Weaving a Web of Heterogeneous Agents for Collaborative Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07061/) (2024)
- [A Survey of AI Agent Protocols](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16736/) (2025)
- [Visibility into AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.13138/) (2024)
- [Open Problems in Technical AI Governance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14981/) (2024)
- [Agentic Web: Weaving the Next Web with AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21206/) (2025)
- [R&D-Agent-Quant: A Multi-Agent Framework for Data-Centric Factors and Model Joint Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15155/) (2025)
- [Internet of Agents: Fundamentals, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07176/) (2025)
- [Beyond DNS: Unlocking the Internet of AI Agents via the NANDA Index and Verified AgentFacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14263/) (2025)
- [AI Agents with Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02841/) (2025)
- [LOKA Protocol: A Decentralized Framework for Trustworthy and Ethical AI Agent Ecosystems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10915/) (2025)
- [The Adoption and Usage of AI Agents: Early Evidence from Perplexity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07828/) (2025)
- [An Empirical Study of Agent Developer Practices in AI Agent Frameworks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01939/) (2025)
- [Inherent and emergent liability issues in LLM-based agentic systems: a principal-agent perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03255/) (2025)
- [Decentralized Governance of Autonomous AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.17114/) (2024)
- [A Pragmatic View of AI Personhood](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26396/) (2025)
- [Trustless Autonomy: Understanding Motivations, Benefits, and Governance Dilemmas in Self-Sovereign Decentralized AI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09757/) (2025)
- [Legal Alignment for Safe and Ethical AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04175/) (2026)
- [Societal and technological progress as sewing an ever-growing, ever-changing, patchy, and polychrome quilt](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05197/) (2025)
- [AI Agents and the Law](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08544/) (2025)
- [Position: Collaborative Agentic AI Needs Interoperability Across Ecosystems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21550/) (2025)
- [A Review of SHACL: From Data Validation to Schema Reasoning for RDF Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01441/) (2021)
- [Can We Govern the Agent-to-Agent Economy?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16606/) (2025)
- [BetaWeb: Towards a Blockchain-enabled Trustworthy Agentic Web](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13787/) (2025)
- [Toward a Safe Internet of Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00520/) (2025)
- [Institutional AI: A Governance Framework for Distributional AGI Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10599/) (2026)
- [Emergence in Multi-Agent Systems: A Safety Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.04514/) (2024)
- [Revisiting Gossip Protocols: A Vision for Emergent Coordination in Agentic Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01531/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The agentic web marks a structural transition from a human-centered information network to a digital environment populated by artificial intelligence (AI) agents that perceive, decide, and act autonomously. As delegated action unfolds at machine speed, exceeds discrete moments of human judgment, and distributes decision-making across non-human actors, existing legal frameworks face growing strain, creating an urgent need for new mechanisms capable of sustaining legality in this emerging order. A trustworthy agentic web therefore depends on the infrastructuring of legality through interoperable protocols that organize identity, delegation, and accountability across systems, enabling coherent governance beyond isolated platforms. Towards this end, this article advances a distributed legal infrastructure (DLI), a governance paradigm composed of five interlocking layers: (1) self-sovereign, soulbound agent identities; (2) cognitive AI logic and constraint systems; (3) decentralized adjudication mechanisms for dispute resolution; (4) bottom-up agentic market regulation to mitigate information asymmetries and network effects, including insurance-based models; and (5) portable institutional frameworks that enable legal interoperability while preserving plural sources of authority. This reference framework contributes to emerging research on embedding legality within agentic web infrastructure, aligning distributed technical systems with accountability, contestability, and rule-of-law principles.