New agnostic framework allows anyone to easily find, verify and trust AI agents

AI agents are launching at an incredibly rapid pace, with more than one billion agents projected to be built by businesses alone in the next three years. As AI agents start communicating with one another, a major challenge is suddenly emerging: there is currently no standard for distinguishing legitimate agents from unvetted or malicious ones, nor enforcing the integrity of agent-to-agent interactions.

To help solve this high-stakes challenge, GoDaddy is launching a trusted identity naming system for AI agents. This system is based on proven technologies and protocols, making it easy to find and trust agents that are legitimate. It builds on the company’s decades of leadership and experience in helping keep the internet safe with domain names, the Domain Name System (DNS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

“The AI agentic space is a lot like the ‘Wild West’ of the early internet, but fortunately GoDaddy has three decades of experience building and sustaining trust in complex, rapidly evolving ecosystems,” said Travis Muhlestein, chief technology officer, Product & AI, at GoDaddy. “With our scale, expertise and technology, GoDaddy is uniquely positioned to extend that trust and help keep the internet safe from rogue AI agents.”

Marketing Technology News: Feature-Rich to Functionally Effective: Adjusting your Martech Strategy

Technical Details

The service is engineered to work across protocols via a modular adapter layer and draws on concepts documented in an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft for an Agent Name Service (ANS). The system issues a report on each enrolled agent: verifying its identity, confirming good standing and specifying its location.

• Discovery through domains and DNS: Human-readable names map to agent endpoints and metadata.
• Verifiable identity with X.509: Agent operators enroll, renew and manage certificates issued by trusted authorities, enabling cryptographic verification using the public key infrastructure (PKI).
• Protocol-agnostic adapters: An open layer translates agent records into the formats used by popular agent frameworks, preventing lock-in.
• Lifecycle management: Registration, renewal and revocation flows provide security and governance for production deployments.

Marketing Technology News: Martech Interview with Meena Ganesh, Senior Product Marketing Manager @ Box AI

Standards-aligned, ecosystem-ready

The design draws on work from the IETF on an agent name service, a universal, DNS-inspired directory, that pairs discovery with PKI-backed verification and a protocol-agnostic adapter layer. GoDaddy is driving collaboration with standards bodies and industry partners to ensure broad participation and seamless interoperability.