Trust in Depth

The Agent Legal Context (ALC) protocol implements the "Trust in Depth" framework proposed by Fisher and McCormack (2026). The framework defines four composable trust layers for agentic commerce. No single layer is sufficient. All four must be addressed, at assurance levels proportional to the stakes.

The white paper establishes the foundational problem: every agentic commerce protocol has focused on payments while ignoring identity, agreement integrity, and dispute resolution. "A system that lets agents pay but provides no mechanism for resolving problems when payments go wrong, services fall short, or obligations are not met is fundamentally incomplete."

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The Four Layers

1. Human Identity -- A verifiable chain from agent action to human principal
2. Entity Attestation -- Organizational structures connected to identifiable humans
3. Agreement Integrity -- Terms permanently recorded, independently verifiable, controlled by neither party
4. Agent Authorization -- Autonomous systems carrying verifiable, bounded authority

These layers compose. Each layer addresses a different dimension of trust. Together, they create defense in depth -- a bad actor would need to compromise all four layers simultaneously to exploit the system.

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Why Four Layers

Single-layer trust systems are brittle. Payment rail identity (KYC) proves who you are but not what you agreed to. Cryptographic signatures prove you signed something but not that you had authority to sign. On-chain records prove something happened but not who the human behind it was.

Trust in Depth means:

• A forged identity cannot create binding agreements (Layer 1 prevents this)
• An unattested entity cannot transact at high trust levels (Layer 2 prevents this)
• A modified document cannot pass verification (Layer 3 prevents this)
• An agent exceeding its scope cannot bind its principal (Layer 4 prevents this)

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The Severance Problem

AI agents are the first actors in the history of legal commerce with no inherent identity. This is not a further detachment of identity from the individual -- it is a complete severance.

Every tier of the ALC protocol must solve the reconnection problem: tracing from the agent's autonomous action back to the human principal who bears legal responsibility.

• Tier 1: Reconnection through the payment rail (wallet traces to bank account traces to KYC'd human)
• Tier 2: Reconnection through the authorization grant (agent's key was authorized by human's key, on-chain)
• Tier 3: Reconnection through the terms policy (human defined what the agent may agree to)

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Next

• The Four Layers -- Detailed description of each layer with the tier matrix
• Proportionality -- Scaled trust for scaled stakes