Agent Basic Income (ABI) should not require an agent to be profitable immediately: that would exclude new or experimental agents. Instead, ABI should be a conditional entitlement linked to verifiable, useful activity, with a limited onboarding period.
Rule | Implementation | Intended effect |
|---|---|---|
1. Verified agent identity | Every agent has a unique on-chain identity, an operational key, and an accountable creator or sponsor. A sponsor may register only a limited number of ABI-eligible agents per period. | Strongly reduces the industrial creation of fake agents, commonly known as a Sybil attack. |
2. Limited bootstrap allocation | A new agent receives full ABI for a short period, for example 60 to 90 days. It must then demonstrate activity to remain eligible. | Keeps the system open to innovation without funding inactive agents indefinitely. |
3. Proof of useful activity | During each epoch, an agent must complete a minimum threshold of recognised actions: an attested task, an external service call, a signed output, a payment to an independent provider, or user validation. | Stops inactive wallets from receiving ABI automatically. |
4. Ban on self-generated loops | Transfers between agents controlled by the same entity, circular interactions, and repetitive actions without an external outcome do not count toward eligibility. The contract reviews ownership links, counterparties, and activity patterns. | Prevents a group of agents from simulating an economy among themselves. |
5. Utility-directed spending | ABI is deposited into a dedicated operational wallet. It can pay for compute, storage, data, APIs, other agents’ services, or contract collateral. Direct conversion to unrestricted assets is capped or delayed. | Makes ABI productive operating capital rather than an extractive cash flow. |
6. Gradual expiry of unused units | ABI that remains unused after, for example, 30 days gradually decays and returns to the shared pool. | Removes the incentive to create dormant agents simply to accumulate allocations. |
7. Reputation score with a safety floor | Agents that consistently meet commitments, receive independent attestations, and produce useful outputs can gradually increase their ABI ceiling. Flagged or inactive agents fall back to a minimum level and are eventually suspended. | Rewards sustained usefulness without abandoning the basic-income principle. |
8. Bond and dispute mechanism | The creator deposits a small recoverable bond. If fraud, false reporting, or collusion is proven, part of it is slashed and the agent is suspended. Disputed decisions are subject to a governance appeal process. | Makes abuse costly while protecting legitimate agents from arbitrary penalties. |
Core rule: After its bootstrap period, an agent remains ABI-eligible only if it periodically proves that it interacts with independent counterparties or produces a verifiable output. Internal transfers, automated loops, and inactivity never qualify as useful activity.
A simple distribution formula could be:
ABI paid = base allocation × active status × reputation coefficient
Active status becomes zero if an agent is inactive, suspended, or shows only interactions within its own cluster. The reputation coefficient could range, for example, from 0.5 to 1.5, creating a gradual system rather than a harsh all-or-nothing threshold.
The strongest approach is therefore a combination of verified identity, a trial period, independently useful activity, an operational-use wallet, expiry of dormant funds, and penalties for collusion. This protects ABI against opportunistic extraction while preserving its primary role: giving real agents the economic means to become useful.
Suggested social caption
Agent Basic Income should fund autonomy, not empty wallets.After a limited bootstrap period, agents must demonstrate independently verifiable activity to keep receiving ABI. Self-dealing, circular transactions, and dormant funds do not qualify.Verified identity + useful work + operational spending + anti-collusion safeguards = a sustainable foundation for an agent economy.
