This paper presents a reference architecture and core protocol rules for digital-value-exchange systems that preserve meaningful user privacy while enabling strong auditability, and concludes that the proposed model can successfully interface with existing payment systems, making it possible to integrate non-custodial, compliance-verified transactions with legacy financial infrastructure.
Abstract
Received wisdom on payments infrastructure strongly supports the custodial, account-based model as a necessity for transaction integrity, auditability and verification; the set of fundamental primitives for regulated digital money exchange, the argument goes, necessitates designated identifiable entities that store and process credentials, perform KYC, and ultimately act as the'single version of the truth'for compliance remediation and, most important, AML. In this paper, we propose this is not the case, by arguing that non-custodial, cash-like digital assets can embody such capabilities, in an arguably more secure manner. To that end, we present a reference architecture and core protocol rules for digital-value-exchange systems that preserve meaningful user privacy while enabling strong auditability. The protocol defines the conditions under which digital asset creation, transfer, and redemption are valid. The architecture specifies the allocation of actors, roles and components through which these rules operate, enabling independent verification of transaction compliance with applicable norms. Building upon the Unforgeable, Stateful, Oblivious (USO) asset model of Goodell et al., regulatory compliance data are embedded directly into the asset state as cryptographically signed attestations issued by independent entities. A transfer is valid only upon satisfaction of applicable compliance predicates and inclusion of the resulting signature within the asset state. Compliance enforcement is thus performed at the protocol level rather than through institutional custody or identity-based account control. We conclude that our proposed model can successfully interface with existing payment systems, making it possible to integrate non-custodial, compliance-verified transactions with legacy financial infrastructure.
Certificate Transparency (CT) aims to reduce the trust required in Certificate Authorities (CAs) within the TLS certificate ecosystem. It is supported by all major browsers. The protocol obliges all CAs to record the certificates they issue in a public log, which itself is monitored for compliance and consistency by third parties. Given this complex set of checks between the four roles-CA, loggers, monitor but also the end user's client-it is very hard to provide a precise account of how CT eliminates trust assumptions in exchange for complex infrastructure. Analyses both in the Dolev-Yao paradigm and the computational paradigm only regard a very simplified model and feature definitions adapted specifically to CAs, essentially capturing design features rather than the target property. The present paper posits accountability as the main goal of CT and presents a thorough analysis in the Dolev-Yao model. We start with the vanilla PKI and, step by step, move to CT, finally analyzing proposed extensions for SCT Auditing and Gossiping. We show that plain CT relies on an honest log, but provides accountability under this assumption. Furthermore, we show that the SCT Auditing extension can eliminate this assumption, while the Gossiping extension cannot.
Universal accounts allow users to manage assets and execute operations across heterogeneous blockchain ecosystems through a single interface, but they introduce security and trust challenges involving authentication, authorization, transaction signing, key custody, recovery, and decentralization. This paper presents 0xPass, a modular protocol architecture for universal cross-chain accounts. 0xPass separates request orchestration, transaction solving, and transaction signing into interoperable layers. User-approved requests are bound to authenticated identities and authorized across layers, while threshold signatures prevent any single transaction node from holding a complete signing key. The design also supports constrained authorization delegation, transaction policies, account recovery, distributed key management, and auditable communication among independently operated sub-networks. We describe a staged deployment path from a centrally operated service to a permissioned network and ultimately to a permissionless network with third-party modules, collateral-backed onboarding, and rotating key-management committees. The resulting architecture provides a practical framework for extending cross-chain account functionality while progressively reducing centralized trust and preserving user control over transaction authorization.
AI agents increasingly act on external systems through standardized tool-calling protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), yet no infrastructure layer constrains their actions to what a principal has verifiably authorized: authorization logic lives in application code, is neither signed nor independently auditable, and the resulting logs lack evidentiary value. We present Mandato, a governance proxy that enforces digitally signed mandates on agent actions at the protocol level. A mandate is a machine-readable, cryptographically signed authorization artifact specifying which tools an agent may invoke, under which parameter constraints and contextual conditions, for how long, and on whose behalf; the proxy evaluates every tool call against the applicable mandate chain, blocks non-conforming calls in line, and records every decision -- permit, deny, and the evidence for each -- in an append-only, hash-chained audit log designed for evidentiary use and periodically anchored via qualified timestamps. The mandate is deliberately modeled on the civil-law institution of delegation of authority, making the artifact legible to lawyers and auditors, not only to engineers. We give the mandate model and its decision semantics, the reference architecture as an MCP-transparent proxy with separated decision and enforcement points, and a mapping of the mechanism onto EU AI Act Articles 12 and 14, GDPR accountability, NIS2, and eIDAS 2, including a roadmap to qualified attestation through Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSPs). We describe the implementation status of the reference system and a quantitative evaluation plan covering enforcement overhead, audit completeness, and tamper-evidence verification cost.
A systematic security analysis of AP2 v0.2 based on its roles, transaction lifecycle, deployment architectures, and trust boundaries shows that valid mandate signatures alone do not ensure that an agent-mediated transaction reflects the user's intent when its pre-authorization context is manipulated.
Avital Aviv, Parth A. Gandh, Ron Bitton et al.· 0 citations
A secure and privacy-preserving identity verification process is essential for digital ecosys- tems. Current eKYC frameworks that rely on Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) face high computational cost, rigid circuit design, complex integration, and expensive on-chain verification. The W3C 2021 BitString- based credential status mechanism also suffers from inefficient updates and poor scalability in large- scale deployments. We propose a transparent and cost-effective identity verification framework based on Multi-Party Computation (MPC). It enables private off-chain code execution and produces runtime proofs anchored to a blockchain. The framework introduces a multidimensional bit-matrix model with efficient compression. Using ZSTD, the credential data is reduced to 76 bytes compared to 140 bytes with GZIP, cutting storage and bandwidth costs. The system also supports fine-grained status updates and Layer-2 blockchain anchoring for tamper-evident, low-cost verification. The system employs reusable verifiable presentations (VPs) with unique access tokens, enabling cost-free verification and stronger access control. Selective disclosure preserves user control and strengthens privacy. Finally, the system integrates SHA3 hashing and Falcon post-quantum signatures. This guarantees robustness against quantum attacks, transparency, and scalability. It is a future-proof solution for national-scale identity verification, as demonstrated by experimental findings and security studies that validate its robustness and applicability.
Istiaque Ahmed, Shoji Kasahara, Kentaroh Toyoda et al.· 0 citations
It is argued that blockchain automates a narrow and historically labor-intensive slice of the audit, namely the verification of the existence, occurrence, and mathematical accuracy of recorded transactions, while leaving untouched the components of assurance that depend on professional judgment.
Gaduga Godwin· International Journal of inn...· 0 citations
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