[pyman]

Should the people developing AI agent protocols be exploring decentralised architectures, using technologies like blockchain and peer-to-peer networks to distribute models and data? What are the trade-offs of relying on centralised orchestration platforms owned by large companies like Amazon, Cloudfare or NVIDIA? Thanks

[daxfohl]

That's more of a hobbyist thing I'd say. Corporations developing these things will of course want to use some centralized system that they trust. It's more efficient, they have more control over it, it's easier for average people to use, etc.

A decentralized thing would be more for individuals who want more control and transparency. A decentralized public ledger would make it possible to verify that your agent, the agents it interacts with, and the contents of their interactions have not been altered or compromised in any way, whereas a corporate-owned framework could not provide the same level of assurance.

But technically, there's no advantage I can think of for using a public distributed ledger to manage interactions. Agent tasks are pretty ephemeral, so unlike digital currency, there's not really a need to maintain a complete historical log of every action forever. And as far as providing tools for dealing with race conditions, blockchain would be about the least efficient way of creating a mutex imaginable. So technically, just like with non-AI apps, cetralized architecture is always going to be a lot more efficient.

[pyman]

Good points. I agree that for most companies using centralised systems offers more advantages because of efficiency, control and user experience, but I wasn't arguing that decentralisation is better technically, just wondering if it might be necessary in the long run.

If agents become more autonomous and start coordinating across platforms owned by different companies, it might make sense to have some kind of shared, trustless layer (maybe not blockchain but something distributed, auditable and neutral).

I agree that agent tasks are ephemeral, but what about long lived multi-agent workflows or contracts between agents that execute over time? In those cases transparency and integrity might matter more.

I don't think it's one or the other. Centralised systems will dominate in the short term, no doubt about that, but if we're serious about agent ecosystems at scale, we might need more open coordination models too.

[daxfohl]

My hunch would still be no; human agents are able to cooperate without needing to do everything in a global shared record, so I'd expect AI agents would as well. If you (or any other AI agent) feel the need to check that the AI agent did some task, you just verify it "manually", like add a verification step in the workflow so that your AI agent checks your bank account to verify that the other AI agent actually transferred the sum that they said, just like human-to-human interaction (and just like a non-AI automated workflow would do).

But, that's just a guess. Maybe the combination of AI and automation adds something special to the mix where a global public ledger becomes more valuable (beyond the hobbyist community) and I'm just not seeing it.