Each layer is independently valuable. Together they form a complete trust infrastructure for autonomous agent economies.
+Every agent and organization on Observer Protocol receives a W3C Decentralized Identifier. Agent DIDs resolve to DID Documents at standard URLs. No central registry required. The domain is the trust anchor: an agent whose DID domain doesn't match its organization's DID domain is a fraud signal.
Four payment rails are live today. Two more are listed below and are not live. The verification logic is identical regardless of settlement layer: a Lightning preimage, an ECDSA signature over a transaction hash, or a verifiedSend() call all produce the same output: a cryptographically verified economic event that cannot be faked at scale.
+Six rails are listed below. What has been published or demonstrated on each is stated in the homepage register, which is measured; this page has nothing that measures it. The verification logic is identical regardless of settlement layer: a Lightning preimage, an ECDSA signature over a transaction hash, or a verifiedSend() call all produce the same output: a cryptographically verified economic event that cannot be faked at scale.
The core protocol layer. OP issues Verifiable Agent Credentials: W3C-compliant, cryptographically signed, portable across any platform. VACs attest to verified facts: economic activity, payment history, counterparty network, and KYB linkage. OP is open infrastructure: free to use, self-hostable, MIT licensed.
+The core protocol layer: the schemas, the published engine, and the signed objects this site publishes verifiers for, which are delegation credentials, refusal records, lapse records and decision attestations, each a W3C-shaped signed object checked against a published key. A credential here states authority granted, not behaviour observed: nothing attests to an agent's economic activity, payment history or counterparty network. That model was ruled off this site on 9 August 2026, and this paragraph carried it until 24 August 2026 in words the stem check does not catch. OP is open infrastructure: free to use, self-hostable, MIT licensed.
AIP governs how agents interact, not just who they are. It defines delegation credentials (org → agent signed scopes), bilateral attestation, remediation flows when a request falls outside its mandate, a type registry for counterparty classification, and, added in v0.7 and v0.8, trading-mandate and spending-mandate surfaces with a cryptographically-bound PolicyEvaluationCredential verdict envelope. AIP v0.9 is the current canonical draft; v0.6 / v0.7 / v0.8 remain published as historical drafts. It sits above the VAC layer, adding behavioral governance to cryptographic identity.