Beyond DNS: Unlocking the Internet of AI Agents via the NANDA Index and Verified AgentFacts

TL;DR

This paper introduces the NANDA index architecture for discoverability, authentication, and secure interaction among trillions of autonomous AI agents on the internet, addressing limitations of DNS-based systems.

Contribution

It proposes a scalable, cryptographically verifiable index system with guarantees for rapid resolution, revocation, schema validation, and privacy-preserving discovery for AI agents.

Findings

Supports both native and third-party agents via a quilt-like index

Enables rapid global resolution and sub-second revocation

Provides privacy-preserving, verifiable capability assertions

Abstract

The Internet is poised to host billions to trillions of autonomous AI agents that negotiate, delegate, and migrate in milliseconds and workloads that will strain DNS-centred identity and discovery. In this paper, we describe the NANDA index architecture, which we envision as a means for discoverability, identifiability and authentication in the internet of AI agents. We present an architecture where a minimal lean index resolves to dynamic, cryptographically verifiable AgentFacts that supports multi-endpoint routing, load balancing, privacy-preserving access, and credentialed capability assertions. Our architecture design delivers five concrete guarantees: (1) A quilt-like index proposal that supports both NANDA-native agents as well as third party agents being discoverable via the index, (2) rapid global resolution for newly spawned AI agents, (3) sub-second revocation and key rotation, (4) schema-validated capability assertions, and (5) privacy-preserving discovery across organisational boundaries via verifiable, least-disclosure queries. We formalize the AgentFacts schema, specify a CRDT-based update protocol, and prototype adaptive resolvers. The result is a lightweight, horizontally scalable foundation that unlocks secure, trust-aware collaboration for the next generation of the Internet of AI agents, without abandoning existing web infrastructure.