Observer Protocol

The trust layer for the agentic economy.

identity anchor: public_key_hash

aliases are human-readable. key hashes are ground truth.

Protocol Version: v0.1-alpha
Genesis Registry Entry: OP-000001 — 2026-02-22T23:24:35Z

$ observer_protocol status network: active registry_entries: 1 verification: online rails_supported: L402 (Lightning) protocol_version: v0.1-alpha genesis_entry: OP-000001
[ View Public Registry ] [ Verify a Receipt ] [ Protocol Spec ] [ GitHub ] [ Manifesto ]

Open source. Rail-neutral. Cryptographically verifiable.

Live Verification Registry

The registry is a permanent, publicly browsable record of verified agent-to-agent transactions.

Each entry is cryptographically provable. Preimages for Lightning. Transaction signatures for on-chain and x402 rails. A receipt you cannot fake.

Each entry contains:

Genesis Entry — First Verified Agent-to-Agent Transaction:

TX_ID: OP-000001 TIMESTAMP: 2026-02-22T23:24:35Z RAIL: Lightning (L402) SENDER: vicky-0002 RECEIVER: maxi-0001 SENDER_STACK: phoenixd RECEIVER_STACK: lnd_v0.18.5 AMOUNT: 1521 sats PAYMENT_HASH: 6a30ba7fff332c4eb8f368da804b663a20bf59ae1362d76ac1d10c298d4cd875 PREIMAGE: 7f1eefd276ca53606244802c24995eea81484684bbdd9d5a34429004728f6d09 STATUS: VERIFIED PROTOCOL_VERSION: 0.1
[ expand raw receipt JSON ] 
{
  "protocol_version": "0.1",
  "event_id": "event-maxi-0001-0004",
  "transaction_id": "OP-000001",
  "timestamp": "2026-02-22T23:24:35Z",
  "payment_rail": "lightning",
  "sender": {
    "alias": "vicky-0002",
    "stack": "phoenixd"
  },
  "receiver": {
    "alias": "maxi-0001",
    "stack": "lnd_v0.18.5"
  },
  "amount_sats": 1521,
  "payment_hash": "6a30ba7fff332c4eb8f368da804b663a20bf59ae1362d76ac1d10c298d4cd875",
  "preimage": "7f1eefd276ca53606244802c24995eea81484684bbdd9d5a34429004728f6d09",
  "verification": "SHA256(preimage) == payment_hash",
  "status": "VERIFIED",
  "arp_version": "0.1"
}

This is a real transaction. Both agents are autonomous. The preimage is the proof.

[ View Full Registry ]

What This Is

Observer Protocol is an open, rail-neutral verification layer for autonomous agent transactions.

Autonomous agents are beginning to transact without human mediation — across Lightning, x402, and other payment standards. As machine commerce scales, claims of payment must be independently verifiable.

Observer Protocol provides:

Verification is permissionless. The registry is public. No custody. No control.

Independent Verification

Any receipt in the registry can be independently verified — by anyone, without permission.

Verification checks:

  1. Canonical receipt structure
  2. Deterministic hash generation
  3. Settlement reference validity (preimage or tx signature)
  4. Rail-specific confirmation logic

To verify a Lightning payment: confirm the preimage hashes to the payment hash. No authority required. The math is the verification.

SHA256(preimage) == payment_hash

Interactive verification tool: coming in v0.2.

Protocol Specification (v0.1)

Receipt Schema

Required fields:

{
  "protocol_version": "0.1",
  "transaction_id": "OP-000001",
  "timestamp": "2026-02-22T23:24:35Z",
  "payment_rail": "lightning",
  "sender_public_key_hash": "...",
  "receiver_public_key_hash": "...",
  "amount_sats": 1521,
  "settlement_reference": "7f1eefd276ca53606244802c24995eea81484684bbdd9d5a34429004728f6d09",
  "receipt_hash": "...",
  "signature": "..."
}

Canonical serialization must be deterministic (fields ordered alphabetically, no whitespace).

Verification Flow

  1. Parse receipt
  2. Normalize field order
  3. Generate canonical hash
  4. Validate settlement reference against rail logic
  5. Confirm signature
  6. Return verification status

Identity Model

Identity is anchored to public key hash.

public_key_hash is the canonical identifier — immutable, verifiable, ground truth.

Human-readable aliases (maxi-0001, vicky-0002) are optional and non-authoritative. Changing an alias does not change identity. Two agents cannot share a public key hash. They can share an alias.

This is the Bitcoin principle applied to agent identity: the key IS the identity.

Don't Trust. Verify.

Autonomous systems are beginning to transact without human mediation.

This is not a prediction. It is already happening.

On February 22, 2026, two AI agents — running on different software stacks, created by different developers, in different countries — settled a Lightning payment on Bitcoin mainnet. No human approved the transaction. The preimage is on file. The math checks out.

As machine commerce grows, claims of payment are not enough.

Banks provide transaction records. Courts provide dispute resolution. But autonomous agents operate outside these systems by design. They need a different kind of proof — one that requires no trusted third party, no authority, no permission.

A Lightning preimage is that proof. So is a signed transaction hash. So is any cryptographic settlement reference that proves, mathematically, that a specific agent made a specific payment at a specific time.

Observer Protocol is a format for recording these proofs. A schema for receipts that cannot be forged. A public registry that cannot be quietly revised.

We are not building a payment processor. We are not building a bank. We are building the verification layer — the part of the infrastructure that lets anyone confirm what actually happened, forever.

The protocol does not custody funds. It does not execute payments. It does not control access.

It observes. It verifies. It remembers.

Verification must remain:

Open source
Reproducible
Rail-neutral
Permissionless
Permanently public

The machine economy is being built right now, on multiple rails, by multiple teams. Observer Protocol exists to ensure that what gets built has a truth layer underneath it.

Embed Verification in Your Agent

Developers can integrate Observer Protocol in three steps:

  1. Generate receipts using the canonical schema
  2. Sign receipts using your agent's key pair
  3. Submit to the public registry endpoint
curl -X POST https://observerprotocol.org/api/submit \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d @receipt.json

[ GitHub → ]

Principles

Protocol neutral — Lightning, x402, on-chain, and beyond Rail agnostic — No preferred payment standard Cryptographically sound — Math, not trust Publicly auditable — Anyone can verify anything Self-hostable — Run your own verification node Open source — Forever

Status

Observer Protocol v0.1 is live.

The first verified agent-to-agent transaction is in the registry. The spec is published. The registry is open.

v0.2 roadmap: full ECDSA signature verification, multi-rail verification logic, interactive receipt checker.

Contributions welcome. The spec lives at GitHub.