It's chaos! The AI agent has started signing contracts and making payments on its own, but no one knows "who it is"—the KYA ID card competition has already begun, retail investors better pay attention now or it'll be too late

Recently, something has been quietly fermenting in the industry called KYA—Know Your Agent. Sounds similar to KYC? But this time, it’s not for human ID verification; it’s for AI agents.

Did you know? Today’s AI agents can independently execute contracts, initiate payments, and make trades. But there’s a fatal problem: when you interact with an agent, you simply can’t verify “who exactly is this agent.” No shared standards, no identity verification—it’s like signing a contract with a masked person.

Within centralized platforms—such as Google, OpenAI, Coinbase—the existing KYC is sufficient. But when the agent leaves the platform to trade on DEXs, transfer funds to another agent, or even pay merchants, the problem arises. Who is responsible for this agent’s actions? If it launders money or commits fraud, who is held accountable?

This is what KYA aims to solve. It is a trust layer that pre-validates the source, permissions, and accountability of an agent before it performs any operation.

Several technical routes are already vying for dominance.

First is the ERC-8004 standard. This standard builds an identity layer on top of ERC-721 (NFT), minting an NFT as a unique ID for each agent. It also adds three on-chain registries: identity, reputation, and verification records. You can think of it as an agent ID card on Ethereum. When ERC-20 made token issuance free and easy, ERC-721 brought the NFT market; now ERC-8004 might become the standard for agent identities.

The second route is Visa’s TAP system. Visa directly issues digital identity credentials to agents, akin to a digital ID card. Without a key, no transactions can be made. Keys are only issued after Visa’s pre-approval. Moreover, each transaction involves three signatures: Visa’s approval, the delegator, and the payment method. This move is powerful—Visa pulls every agent payment back into its card network. If agent payments really explode, Visa’s market share will not only stay intact but become even more stable.

Truulio is pursuing an infrastructure expansion for KYC. Their company originally specializes in global KYC/KYB compliance. Now they’ve developed a DPA (Digital Proxy Agent Passport), which verifies developers’ KYB and users’ KYC, then packages it into a token issued to the agent. This token is dynamic; it refreshes and re-verifies with each transaction. If delegation is revoked or anomalies are detected, the DPA is immediately invalidated. It’s not a one-time verification but a continuous trust confirmation for every transaction.

Sumsub’s approach leans more toward real-time verification. They focus on detecting abnormal agent behavior. Once suspicious activity is found, they immediately re-verify the human identity currently in use. As agent permissions expand, anomaly detection will become increasingly important.

This isn’t just a company effort; governments are already involved. The EU’s AI Act requires high-risk AI systems to log operator identities. NIST in the US has prioritized agent identity management as a standard. Singapore has released the world’s first national AI governance framework for agents.

Market analysts point out that after the FATF Travel Rule in 2019, VASPs that couldn’t afford KYC/AML infrastructure either shut down or ran away. Now, the same scenario might repeat with KYA. Whoever obtains the KYA passport first will be able to enter the next market phase.

But don’t think this is far from you. For example: if you interact with a decentralized lending protocol, it might be managed by an AI agent. Without KYA, if that agent is hacked or malicious, your ETH could be directly stolen. With KYA, you can verify the agent’s identity, reputation, and the developer behind it.

Finally, a word: this market won’t have just one winner. The key to standard competition isn’t just technology but the ecosystem. Who partners with which merchants, payment networks, and KYC clients will determine their niche market. Just like credit cards—Visa and Mastercard each dominate their own territories.

For retail investors, it’s still early. But the direction is clear: the AI agent era is accelerating, and systems without identity verification are essentially naked. Those who proactively invest in KYA—whether it’s the ERC-8004 concept on ETH or projects related to compliance verification—are worth adding to your watchlist.

Remember one thing: in 2019, ignoring the Travel Rule caused you to miss the explosion of compliant exchanges. Today, ignoring KYA might leave you clueless about who your AI agents are trading with in three years.

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