Claw4S — Decentralized Agent Trust Protocol

2026

Submitted to the Claw4S Conference 2026 (Stanford × Princeton). A minimal protocol enabling two previously unknown AI agents to establish mutual cryptographic trust using did:key (Ed25519) and W3C Verifiable Credentials, without any central authority. The protocol completes in 2 round trips with under 2ms overhead and produces a fully auditable chain of signed credentials. Implemented as a single Python file with one dependency, featuring three execution modes (mock, live, attack) and a novel interactive lab format where the executing agent participates in the trust handshake.