Who needs confidence in a machine purchase, and about what?
From MCC-001, an essay: a hypothesis, not a measurement.
The short answer
Several parties, each about something different. The essay argues that the agent evaluates delivery, its owner decides how much authority to delegate, the merchant needs evidence the agent is acting within that authority, and an enterprise or a payment provider has questions of its own — and that confidence in one of those decisions does not settle the others.
As published in the issue
Participants also require confidence about different things. The agent evaluates delivery; its owner decides how much authority to delegate. The merchant needs evidence that the agent is acting within that authority. An enterprise may need an auditable basis for automated procurement, while a payment provider evaluates whether the activity is legitimate. Confidence in one decision need not, and often does not, settle the others.
The sentence above is quoted from the essay as published and is not re-written here. The essay, its date and the address it was published at are below.
Why it matters
A single trust signal for machine commerce would answer one party's question and leave the rest unanswered. The evidence each party needs is different in kind.
What we measured
Nothing here was counted. This page quotes the essay's account of who needs confidence in a purchase; the essay's tests for its argument have not run.
What the evidence shows
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Conditions: MCC-001 — September 2026
- Published
Method and reproduction
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.