Most agentic payment systems enforce compliance through post-hoc log monitoring: detection after the fact, not prevention. This talk argues that cryptographic proof can replace compliance theater: an agent generates a zero-knowledge attestation that its intended payment satisfies policy constraints before execution.
We present Trust402, an open-source protocol demonstrating this model in production. Agents produce zero-knowledge proofs that verify spend limits, role permissions, and regulatory constraints. Circuits are proof-system-agnostic, enabling post-quantum upgrades without policy-layer changes.
Concrete takeaways:
- The wrapFetchWithProof pipeline: ZK proof generation composes into x402. No valid proof, no payment
- The role-spend-limit circuit: LessEqThan constraints mapping role membership and spend limits to provable gates
- Verification: ephemeral proofs, on-chain attestation per transaction
- Trade-offs: proving time vs. trust model, circuit expressiveness vs. policy complexity
Attendees leave understanding where ZK proofs fit in agentic payments, what's production-ready, and where the hard problems remain.
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Presentation Language: English
Captioning will be available for attendees in 50+ languages through Wordly. See instructions in each room to utilize captioning.
