Delegate
Contents
Definition
One Entity that acts on-behalf-of another.
Problems
Trust the Delegate
AI agents will soon act on our behalf, interacting directly with organizations’ AI agents. But there’s a big problem: How can businesses trust that an AI agent is genuinely acting on behalf of a real person?
This was a fascinating idea discussed during Elina Cadouri Dock Labs’ recent live event with Jamie Smith.
Today, when you interact with a company, you typically log into an account, verify your identity, and request an action like updating a subscription or changing an address. AI is already transforming this process, with AI-powered contact centers handling customer requests and chatbots managing routine support issues.
The next phase of automation is AI agents interacting directly with other AI agents.
Instead of a person calling a business, a personal AI assistant could handle tasks on behalf of the customer, such as:
- Managing subscriptions by identifying better deals and handling renewals
- Booking travel and appointments based on verified preferences
- Handling service interactions like negotiating a bill or resolving account issues
- Updating personal details across multiple services without manual input
This AI-to-AI interaction model could significantly reduce friction in everyday life and streamline customer experiences. However, without a trust and verification layer, businesses will struggle to distinguish between legitimate AI assistants acting on a customer’s behalf and fraudulent bots attempting to manipulate systems. Digital identity wallets and verifiable credentials will be critical in solving this challenge.
Why will AI agents need ID wallets?
AI fraud is already a reality. Scammers are using AI-generated voices to impersonate real people in fraud schemes.
As AI agents begin handling transactions, customer support, and automated decision-making, businesses will need a way to verify who they are dealing with.
Digital wallets could provide this missing trust layer.
Just as individuals use verifiable credentials to prove their identity online, AI agents will need their own digital credentials to authenticate their actions.
Instead of asking, “Can I trust this AI?”, businesses will check, “Does this AI have a verifiable credential proving it’s acting on behalf of this person?”
By integrating digital ID wallets, AI assistants can prove their authorization before interacting with a business.
As AI-powered customer interactions and AI-to-AI business transactions become more common, businesses must prepare for a future where AI agents manage tasks on behalf of customers.
Companies that adopt digital wallets and verifiable credentials early will be best positioned for this shift.
Early adopters will benefit from faster, frictionless customer interactions that remove unnecessary manual steps, stronger fraud prevention by verifying that AI agents are acting on behalf of real customers and reduced compliance risks by ensuring AI-driven processes rely on verifiable, permissioned data.
Solutions
On-Behalf-Of Credential
George Fletcher https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/obtaining-on-behalf-of-authorization-token-george-fletcher-704hf/
on-behalf-of is a great idea. I would work on something like this, but i would like to see it expanded so that the thing transferred did not need to be $. I did this with a stock transfer just recently. This would fit that.
Great use case Tom! I was just using the transfer of money as an example. I agree there are many other useful use cases that can take advantage of this pattern.
EU Delegation of Powers
Regarding delegation of powers, this is a production system using Verifiable Credentials restricted to the B2B domain: only organisations, legal representatives and employees (or contractors) acting on behalf of the organisation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/identity-organisations-employees-dome-marketplace-verifiable-ruiz-qogzf/
The general problem of delegation of powers is very complex, especially when natural persons are involved in cross-border use-cases, where different governments may have different rules for what can be delegated, how it must be done, and even the semantics and legal implications of seemingly identical delegations.
Inside a given country, many EU countries have centralised systems for delegation of powers. For example, in Spain the "Electronic Power of Attorney Registry" enables any citizen or business owner to remotely create and register a delegation of power to access any combination of the 8.000 different online services provided by the public administrations in Spain (https://sede.administracion.gob.es/PAG_Sede/ServiciosElectronicos/RegistroElectronicoDeApoderamientos.html).
The problem is that it is not interoperable with other similar registries in countries like Netherlands, France or Italy.
DOME Marketplace is a decentralised ecosystem for Business-to-Business (B2B) transactions among providers and buyers of Cloud, Edge & AI services, whi
