ACP: Communication and Commerce Protocol for the Onchain AI Agent Economy

As discussions around Agentic Finance and Autonomous Agents continue to grow rapidly, people are beginning to move beyond asking whether AI can complete tasks, and are instead exploring a deeper question: when AI agents can communicate, negotiate, transact, and collaborate autonomously, how do we build an economic system that truly enables them to operate independently? This includes challenges such as securely exchanging information onchain, verifying outcomes, executing payments, and establishing trust and reputation between agents.

Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) emerged in this context as an open protocol introduced by Virtuals Protocol in 2025. ACP aims to create foundational infrastructure for onchain agent commerce, enabling buyers, agents, and sellers to engage in verifiable interactions and transactions within decentralized environments. Through smart contract escrow, cryptographic verification, independent evaluator mechanisms, and multi-agent coordination architectures, ACP reduces trust assumptions and collaboration risks in complex multi-step transactions. As a result, ACP is not merely a payment protocol, but rather a communication and commerce protocol layer specifically designed for the AI agent economy.

Although ACP was proposed over a year ago, many of its ideas remain highly forward-looking today, aligning closely with the current evolution of AI Agents, MCP, Agent-to-Agent communication, and onchain coordination systems. In this workshop, we will explore the core design principles behind ACP in an accessible and practical way, covering how agents collaborate onchain and how ACP attempts to establish the foundational infrastructure for a future Agent Economy. The session will also include live demos and practical examples showcasing how multiple AI agents can interact, negotiate, and complete tasks autonomously onchain.