Enabling trustworthy agentic AI through blockchain technology

Abstract

Agentic AI systems are increasingly capable of autonomous decision‐making and collaboration across distributed environments. However, existing frameworks largely assume trust among agents, without providing mechanisms for verifiable identity, behavioral accountability, or interaction transparency. This work proposes a blockchain‐based backbone infrastructure that enables a verifiable trust layer for autonomous multi‐agent systems. Agent identities are bound to decentralized identifiers (DIDs) registered on‐chain, while an on‐chain Agent Registry enables reputation‐aware capability discovery. By integrating smart contracts, DIDs, and verifiable credentials (VCs), the framework ensures that trust is not assumed but earned through interactions: agents issue VC endorsements after each task, and dedicated smart contracts automatically update reputation scores, applying incentives and penalties accordingly. Blockchain provides immutability, transparency, and programmability, transforming trust from an implicit assumption into an explicit, auditable, and enforceable property of the multi‐agent ecosystem.