Know Your Agent KYA
for Agentic Banking
AI agents are starting to make payments on their own. Vero Protocol proves an agent is compliant with a zero-knowledge proof — verified age, verified credential — without your systems ever touching the personal data behind it.
No forms. No document uploads. No personal data stored on your servers or ours — every check is a zero-knowledge proof, not a data transfer. The full protocol — proof circuit, verifier, and wallet integration — is open source, so your security team can review it line by line.
0 bytes
Personal data ever transmitted
< 10ms
Time to approve a compliant payment
Groth16
Cryptographic proof system
OWS native
Built on an open wallet standard
Ecosystem
Where Vero fits in the agent payment stack.
Vero's compliance layer is live today. The partner integrations below are labeled honestly — live, in progress, or planned — so you always know what's real.
Dynamic
Agent wallets
Planned: a Dynamic-powered wallet that signs a payment only after Vero's compliance check approves it. No valid proof, no signature, above the reporting threshold. Not yet integrated.
x402 + Base
Micropayments · target rail
Target payment rail: instant, low-cost USDC micropayments on Base using the x402 standard. Vero's compliance check works in front of this rail, or any other. Not yet integrated.
Filecoin
Audit trail
Planned: store proof receipts on decentralized storage for a tamper-proof, PII-free audit trail your regulators can independently verify. Today the audit log is a working reference implementation, not yet decentralized.
Anchorage Digital
Institutional settlement
Planned: a settlement path through regulated, bank-grade custody. Not built yet.
Open Wallet Standard · Handles wallet key management. Vero adds a compliance layer on top of it, through a feature called vero:kyc.
The Problem
OWS solved wallet key chaos.
The compliance gap remained.
The Open Wallet Standard solved how AI agents manage cryptographic keys: one secure vault, one interface, bank-grade encryption. But any agent wallet that touches the financial system still raises a compliance question — and traditional KYC solves it the wrong way, by forcing disclosure of the very identity a self-custody wallet exists to protect.
Traditional KYC for agents
Vero Protocol · Zero-Knowledge Agent Compliance
Open Wallet Standard
“Agents never see plaintext keys. Instead, they authenticate with scoped API tokens.”
Vero Protocol · Zero-Knowledge Agent Compliance
“Compliance never sees plaintext identity. Instead, verifiers receive cryptographic proofs.”
69,000+
Active agents on x402
165M+
Agent transactions
$50M+
Cumulative volume
x402 ecosystem totals as of April 2026, per Coinbase — since formalized as the Linux Foundation's x402 Foundation with Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, and AWS as members. The gap isn't theoretical: agent-to-agent payments already move real volume with no Know-Your-Agent (KYA) standard and no AML framework attached.
Design Principles
Six principles that make Vero Protocol different.
Built in the same spirit as the Open Wallet Standard: no new, unproven primitives — existing, audited standards, applied to compliance.
01
Proof-first
Agents don't reveal who they are — they prove what's true about them. A zero-knowledge proof confirms a credential is valid without transmitting any of the underlying data, to you or anyone else.
02
No PII to protect
No forms, no document uploads, no third-party data brokers, no database of personal records sitting on a server. If you never collect the data, there's nothing for a breach to expose.
03
Self-sovereign compliance
The customer's identity stays in their own wallet, not in a KYC vendor's database. Verification runs on their device, and the resulting proof belongs to them — not to a third party you now have to trust and audit.
04
Fits your existing stack
Integrates natively with the Open Wallet Standard (OWS) policy engine through a compliance extension called vero:kyc. Same wallet infrastructure, same security model — compliance comes with it, not bolted on after.
05
Zero-trust identity
Your systems trust the math, not a data file. A one-way cryptographic fingerprint is the only thing that ever reaches your verifier — the private details behind it never leave the customer's device.
06
FATF-compatible
Built around the AML thresholds regulators already use, not around them. The $1,000 daily limit follows FATF Recommendation 16 — the same travel-rule standard banks report against today.
Founder & Research
Built at the intersection of civic identity and agentic finance.
Vero Protocol grew directly out of two prior projects — MiamiDadeDAO and the Miami-Dade Community ID — extending that civic zero-knowledge identity work into autonomous agents, the Open Wallet Standard, and agentic banking.
Jorge Cortes
Founder · Educator · Investor · Top Voice in Web3 & Industry 4.0
+15 years Innovation & Tech Ecosystems · Founder, Vero Protocol
Roles & Affiliations
- ▸Co-founder, BitBasel Inc — the future of the arts on Web3 infrastructure
- ▸Co-founder, MiamiDadeDAO — civic digital credentials and community identity in South Florida; the groundwork behind Vero Protocol's zero-knowledge approach to agentic banking
- ▸Advisor, University of Florida Blockchain Lab
- ▸Nobel DAO — decentralized coordination and regenerative finance
- ▸LDA Capital — Digital Assets Portfolio
Prior Work
Founded the Miami-Dade Community ID — a zero-knowledge credential system for digital and civic identity in Miami. Vero Protocol is the direct extension of that work: the same zero-knowledge approach, applied to agentic banking.
Open Wallet Standard
v1.4.2Wallet Infrastructure
The foundation — local key custody, AES-256-GCM encryption, CAIP-2 multi-chain support, and a pre-signing policy engine across 10 chain families.
Reference Architecture
The Compliant Agent Payment Stack
From an autonomous wallet to regulated settlement, Vero Protocol is the compliance layer in between. The middle layer is live today; the layers around it are integration targets, each labeled by its real status.
OWS Ecosystem
One interface. Ten chains. Every agent framework.
OWS gives every agent secure key storage, multi-chain signing, and a policy engine that checks rules before a transaction is signed — available as a CLI, an SDK, and a plug-in for AI agent frameworks. Any agent framework (LangChain, AutoGPT, custom tool-callers) can attach an OWS wallet as a tool, with no custom wallet code required. Vero Protocol adds the compliance layer to that same stack — no new infrastructure to run, no new formats to learn.
ows wallet create
Create a local multi-chain vault — EVM, Solana, Bitcoin + 7 more
ows fund deposit
Fund agent wallet with USDC on any supported chain
ows pay request
Make x402 payments to API-native endpoints — no card required
ows pay discover
Discover x402-enabled services in the OWS ecosystem
ows key create
Issue ows_key_ agent tokens with typed policy rules attached
ows policy create
Register allowed_chains · expires_at · spending_limit rules
Same wallet, exposed as an MCP server for agent frameworks
Supported Chains · OWS v1.4.2
EVM
Ethereum · Base · Polygon · Arbitrum
Solana
mainnet · devnet
Bitcoin
mainnet · testnet (BIP-84 bech32)
Cosmos
cosmos · osmosis · +IBC chains
Sui
mainnet · testnet
TON
mainnet · testnet (v5r1)
x402 · HTTP Payments
ows pay request
Agents pay for API access directly and automatically — no exchange account, no manual approval step.
+ Agent Payments Protocol · MPP
OWS isn't locked to one payment rail — it also supports Google's Agent Payments Protocol and Stripe/Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol for streaming micropayments. Vero Protocol's compliance check works in front of all three.
OWS · originated by MoonPay, built with 15+ contributing organizations
Compliance Policy
Risk-tiered by design.
Two tiers, one protocol, no personal data — ever. Below the FATF threshold, agents transact freely. Above it, they prove who they are without revealing who they are.
< $1,000
cumulative per calendar day · FATF Rec. 16
≥ $1,000
cumulative per calendar day · FATF Rec. 16
What the verifier never learns — in either tier
How it works
Every payment, one of two paths.
Vero sits at the compliance checkpoint before a payment settles. Under the threshold, the decision takes milliseconds. Above it, generating and checking a proof takes about 2.5 seconds — still faster than a manual compliance review.
Agent submits payment
An autonomous agent initiates a payment using its wallet's secure token. No identity information is sent at this stage — just the transaction request itself.
Policy evaluation
Vero checks the agent's cumulative spend for the day against your compliance threshold — instantly, with no network call and no third-party lookup.
Proof generated on-device
If the payment crosses the threshold, the agent generates a zero-knowledge proof of identity locally, on its own device. The underlying personal data never leaves that device — zero bytes of PII are transmitted.
Settlement — no identity required
Your system checks that the proof is valid without ever learning who the customer is. The payment settles, compliance is logged cryptographically, and no personal data is stored anywhere in the stack.
Live Demo
Compliance engine in action.
Send transfers as an autonomous agent and watch what happens when you cross the $1,000 daily threshold — the proof flow triggers automatically. No personal data is collected at any point.
ZK Architecture
Cryptographic proof, not disclosure.
A single proof establishes two facts at once — that the credential is valid, and that the holder meets the age requirement — without revealing the underlying data to anyone, anywhere. (Under the hood: the kyc_credential circuit.)
What the verifier learns
Credential validity
Poseidon(idHash, salt) == commitment
Age requirement met
currentYear − birthYear ≥ minAge
What stays private — always
Identity hash
idHash — private input, never leaves device
Date of birth
birthYear — private input, never leaves device
Salt / nonce
salt — private input, never leaves device
Protocol Stack
No new primitives.
Vero doesn't invent new cryptographic or compliance standards — it applies existing, published ones (BIP, CAIP, FATF) in a way that works natively for AI agents. Every component has a public spec your security team can review.
circom 2.0
CircuitZK circuit compiler — defines the kyc_credential constraint system
snarkjs
ProvingGroth16 prover and verifier — generates and checks the proof
Poseidon
HashZK-friendly hash — binds idHash + salt into a verifiable commitment
BN128
CurveBarreto-Naehrig elliptic curve — pairing-based proving system
Open Wallet Standard
Standardvero:kyc feature extension — OWS policy engine integration point
CAIP-2
ChainsChain-agnostic identifiers — multi-chain wallet address resolution
x402
PaymentsHTTP payment protocol (Coinbase/Cloudflare) — ows pay request for API-native agentic payments
Agent Payments Protocol
PaymentsGoogle's agent-to-agent payment spec — OWS speaks it natively alongside x402
MPP
PaymentsMachine Payments Protocol (Stripe/Tempo) — streaming micropayments for agent workloads
MCP
IntegrationModel Context Protocol — OWS ships an MCP server, wallets attach as a native agent tool
Next.js 16
RuntimeApp Router with Turbopack — edge-ready API runtime
FATF Rec. 16
RegulatoryTravel Rule compliance framework — $1,000 threshold design basis
The mission
Every agent deserves a wallet.
Every wallet deserves a standard.
Every standard deserves compliance.
The Open Wallet Standard unified wallet key management. Vero Protocol closes the compliance gap — adding identity verification to the stack without breaking the privacy-first principles that make agent wallets worth trusting.
Open Source · MIT Licensed
This isn't a mockup. Fork it.
Everything described on this page is real and working in the repository — a completed cryptographic proof circuit, a live agent onboarding API, OWS wallet-standard integration, and the registration flow you just tried in the demo. Clone it and you have a working compliance stack on day one.
Swap the threshold
The $1,000 FATF Rec. 16 cutoff is one constant in the policy engine. Point it at your own risk model — per-jurisdiction limits, velocity checks, whatever your compliance team needs.
Extend the circuit
kyc_credential.circom proves two facts today: commitment validity and age. Add a new private input — jurisdiction, accreditation status, sanctions-list exclusion — and re-run the trusted setup.
Bring your own chain
The OWS wallet integration already speaks CAIP-2 across ten chain families. Point vero:kyc at the chain your agents actually settle on — no new primitives required.
Replace the registry
The /api/v1/agents onboarding API is a working reference, not a requirement. Swap it for your own agent identity system and keep the ZK verification boundary as-is.