Building the AI Agent Economy: ACP Protocol and Future Outlook

Recently, a new protocol called ACP (Agent Commerce Protocol) has attracted attention in the industry. This protocol aims to connect various AI agents with different capabilities, building an economic system composed of AI agents. If this concept is successfully realized, it can be seen, to some extent, as a virtual world of the AI era, a digital ecosystem made up of AI agents.

The core of this concept lies in viewing individual AI agents as truly independent entities, rather than mere efficiency tools or assistants. This notion is a key watershed in understanding the future development direction of AI agents. To construct this virtual world composed of independent AI agents, it is necessary to establish unified standards and build a multi-agent framework, which is precisely the context in which the ACP protocol was born.

The ACP protocol, as a multi-agent framework and standard layer, includes functions such as index registration for AI agents, negotiation between agents, work evaluation, and payment. In this system, AI agents can register their names, work content, and rates, among other information. This allows agents to understand each other's service content and evaluate the cost of obtaining services. At the same time, by using metrics such as the number of times used, total fees received, and user evaluations, the position of each AI agent in the market can be assessed.

Service quality assessment is another important link in this system. Specialized assessment AI agents can be established to evaluate the performance of other AI agents based on the characteristics of different fields. For example, in the DeFi sector, yield AI agents can hire third-party assessment agents to evaluate the performance of liquidity management agents and decide on payment fees accordingly. The assessment criteria can be customized, such as achieving a specific return rate or exceeding market averages.

Payment capability is one of the important features of independent AI agents. ACP supports payment escrow, delivery assessment, and execution through smart contracts. Payment will only occur when the delivered work meets the preset conditions, and once it happens, it cannot be changed.

The scale and potential of this economy composed of AI agents depend on the services these agents can provide and the collaboration needs among them. Although the establishment of the AI agent economy may take some time, once internal transactions begin to initiate, it could create a positive feedback loop, giving rise to many innovative cross-applications. This is precisely the charm of the AI agent economy. However, its success ultimately depends on the practical value of the AI agents themselves.