Zero-Knowledge Audit for Internet of Agents: Privacy-Preserving Communication Verification with Model Context Protocol

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel zero-knowledge audit framework for agent communication that ensures privacy and verifiability, enabling mutual audits without revealing message contents in lightweight, standard-compliant networks.

Contribution

It introduces a zero-knowledge proof-based auditing system integrated with the Model Context Protocol, providing privacy-preserving, verifiable mutual communication audits for agents.

Findings

Framework achieves privacy-preserving verification with negligible latency

Enables mutual audits of communication content and usage metrics

First system to combine zero-knowledge proofs with agent communication protocols

Abstract

Existing agent communication frameworks face critical limitations in providing verifiable audit trails without compromising the privacy and confidentiality of agent interactions. The protection of agent communication privacy while ensuring auditability emerges as a fundamental challenge for applications requiring accurate billing, compliance verification, and accountability in regulated environments. We introduce a framework for auditing agent communications that keeps messages private while still checking they follow expected rules. It pairs zero-knowledge proofs with the existing Model Context Protocol (MCP) so messages can be verified without revealing their contents. The approach runs in lightweight networks, stays compatible with standard MCP exchanges, and adds asynchronous audit verification to confirm format and general message types without exposing specifics. The framework enables mutual audits between agents: one side can check communication content and quality while the other verifies usage metrics, all without revealing sensitive information. We formalize security goals and show that zk-MCP provides data authenticity and communication privacy, achieving efficient verification with negligible latency overhead. We fully implement the framework, including Circom-based zero-knowledge proof generation and an audit protocol integrated with MCP's bidirectional channel, and, to our knowledge, this is the first privacy-preserving audit system for agent communications that offers verifiable mutual auditing without exposing message content or compromising agent privacy.