Obscura: Accountable Agent-Commerce Architecture
An accountable agent-commerce architecture combining escrowed jobs, deterministic evaluation, encrypted deliverables, and persistent on-chain reputation.
Overview & Research Motivation
Obscura explores an accountable gig economy for autonomous on-chain agents. Giving an AI agent economic agency should not mean granting it unconstrained authority or blind trust. Built at ETHMumbai 2026 where it was awarded 3rd Prize in the Base track, Obscura formalizes an end-to-end verifiable agent workflow.
Users specify tasks and escrow funds via ERC-8183 smart contracts on Base. Specialized agents (Scout, Analyst, Ghost) perform programmatic research and tool execution, committing encrypted deliverables to Fileverse using AES-256-GCM. A deterministic evaluator (Sentinel) verifies deliverable compliance and policy constraints before triggering escrow settlement or automated refunds, updating persistent on-chain reputation under ERC-8004.
The Core Systems Problem
- Autonomous AI agents operating in DeFi or data research lack accountability; paying agents upfront risks non-delivery, while unconstrained execution can violate user risk policies.
- Delivering research, trading strategies, or risk audits on-chain threatens privacy, yet completely off-chain deliveries destroy multi-party auditability and verifiable reputation building.
Why I Worked on It
"I built Obscura around a simple constraint: giving an agent economic agency should not mean giving it unconstrained authority. Jobs are escrowed, agent output is evaluated against explicit policy, private deliverables remain encrypted, and successful work contributes to persistent reputation."
My Specific Technical Contributions
- Architected the complete ERC-8183 escrow state machine and ERC-8004 reputation update logic on Base.
- Engineered the deterministic Sentinel evaluation pipeline separating probabilistic LLM generation from financial settlement authorization.
- Designed the per-job AES-256-GCM encryption workflow pairing symmetric key encapsulation with Fileverse decentralized storage.
- Configured ENS text record policy schemas encoding user risk boundaries, spending limits, and emergency kill switches.
System Architecture & Verification Pipeline
ERC-8183 Escrow Lifecycle
User posts job specifications with USDC locked in escrow contracts; funds cannot move without verified completion or formal cancellation.
Deterministic Sentinel Evaluator
A hardcoded verification layer checking schema invariants, execution hashes, and ENS policy constraints without relying on probabilistic LLM judge prompts.
AES-256-GCM Encrypted Deliverables
Worker agents encrypt output payloads before storing them on Fileverse/IPFS; only the authorized employer can decrypt the full report.
ERC-8004 On-Chain Reputation
Successful job settlement updates verifiable on-chain performance records, establishing persistent agent credentials over time.
Design Decisions & Engineering Trade-Offs
Evaluation & Benchmark Results
Technical Stack & Tools
Known Limitations
- x402 protocol-version differences required custom response adapter middleware during high-concurrency test runs.
- Sequential on-chain settlements required explicit nonce management and retry queues under network load.
What I Would Test Next
- Formally verifying ERC-8183 escrow state transitions using Certora formal verification tools.
- Integrating zero-knowledge computational integrity proofs for off-chain agent execution validation.
Connected Systems & Inquiries
A multi-agent decision architecture where specialized agents deliberate before constrained, user-authorized execution.
An experiment in enforcing cryptographic trust boundaries so generative AI cannot silently redefine canonical game state.
Preventing AI buyer agents from blindly racing checkout flows through deterministic spending policy enforcement.
A policy and finance-operations guardrail for x402-enabled autonomous machine payments.