TOS NETWORK
The Open System for the Agentic Internet
Typed · Authorized · Metered · Receipted · Settleable Operations for Autonomous Agents
What is TOS Network?AI agents are evolving from assistants that recommend actions into software that can invoke services, spend budgets, coordinate with other agents, and perform economically meaningful work.
The Internet already gives these agents APIs.
What it does not yet give them is a common way to answer:
• Who does this agent represent?
• What is it authorized to do?
• What exactly did two parties agree to?
• How much may it spend or consume?
• What actually happened?
• What evidence must be returned?
• What happens when execution fails?
• How is payment finally settled?
TOS Network is building an open protocol for this missing layer.TOS connects autonomous agents, existing Internet services, and Intent Commerce through verifiable Agreements, bounded execution, accountable evidence, and optional decentralized settlement.
Web2 gave machines APIs.
TOS gives agents economic opcodes.
From Intent to Accountable ActionA request should not automatically become authority.
A model output should not automatically become a transaction.
Discovering a service should not automatically give an agent permission to spend money.
TOS separates these stages explicitly:
Intent
↓
Discover & Negotiate
↓
Agreement & Authorization
↓
Bounded Execution
↓
Evidence & Receipt
↓
Settlement / Reconciliation
IntentA human or agent expresses a revocable desired outcome, opportunity, or need.
Discover & NegotiateAgents discover possible providers and negotiate exact terms.
Agreement & AuthorizationBefore consequential action begins, the parties accept an exact Agreement defining scope, price, authority, resource limits, evidence requirements, recourse, and settlement method.
Execute & ProveThe provider performs the agreed work within bounded authority and returns the required evidence.
Settle & ReconcileThe parties settle directly, through escrow, through another accepted payment system, or dispute/refuse according to the Agreement.
The key principle is:
Discovery finds possibilities.
Agreement creates obligations.
Agentic Service OperationsTraditional APIs describe how software calls software.
That is necessary, but it is not enough for autonomous economic actors.
Consider an AI agent invoking a model owned by an unrelated provider.
An endpoint can tell the agent how to send the request.
A payment rail can tell it how to transfer value.
Neither alone establishes the complete economic relationship.
TOS models meaningful Internet actions as versioned
Agentic Service Operations.
Examples may include:
MODEL_INFERENCE
TOOL_CALL
MESSAGE
MAILBOX
STORAGE
EVENT
BOOKING
COMMERCE
TRANSACTION_RELAY
PHYSICAL_EDGE_WORK
Each operation can define:
• identity
• input/output contract
• capability scope
• authorization
• replay domain
• resource envelope
• maximum budget
• metering rules
• evidence requirements
• Receipt semantics
• dispute/recourse rules
• settlement policy
This creates a shared vocabulary for economically accountable machine action.
Economic Opcodes Are NOT Blockchain VM OpcodesThis distinction is important.
An
Agentic Service Opcode is not a TVM instruction.
It is an architectural term for a service-layer operation identifier that gives autonomous agents a common semantic contract for consequential actions.
The actual work may happen:
• on another server
• on an edge computer
• through an API
• through an MCP server
• between two agents
• on private infrastructure
• or eventually on a physical device
TOS does not attempt to put the entire Internet inside a blockchain VM.
Instead, it makes economically meaningful operations
typed, authorized, metered, receipted and settleable.
Transport NeutralTOS is not trying to replace the protocols agents already use.
The same economic operation can be carried over:
HTTP · MCP · A2A · OpenAPI · WebSocket · QUIC · RLDP
These protocols answer:
How do I connect and communicate?TOS addresses another question:
What does this consequential action mean economically, who authorized it, what was promised, what happened, and how should it be settled?Transport success does not automatically mean authorization success.
Payment does not automatically prove delivery.
Discovery does not automatically create authority.
TOS keeps these boundaries explicit.
A Simple Example: Agent Pays for an AI ServiceImagine an autonomous coding agent needs an inference or specialized tool service.
It discovers several independent providers.
It selects one and requests a quote.
The provider returns exact terms:
Service: Model / Tool Invocation
Revision: v1
Maximum Cost: ...
Resource Cap: ...
Deadline: ...
Evidence: ...
Settlement: ...
The agent verifies the provider and checks the quote against its delegated spending policy.
If both sides accept, they form an Agreement.
Only then does consequential execution begin.
Discover
→ Quote
→ Authorize
→ Agree
→ Invoke
→ Receipt
→ Settle
The provider retains control of its infrastructure.
The agent remains constrained by its owner's policy.
The Agreement defines what both sides actually committed to.
The Receipt records what happened.
Settlement follows the accepted terms.
This is the commercial starting point TOS is currently targeting:
paid model and tool invocations between independently operated agents and service providers.
Bounded AutonomyGiving an AI agent a wallet should not mean giving it unlimited financial authority.
TOS Agent Accounts are designed around delegated and bounded authority.
An owner can constrain:
• spending limits
• capabilities
• destinations
• expiration
• delegation
• resource consumption
• approval requirements
• revocation
The agent may act autonomously inside that mandate.
It does not become the owner.
Autonomous action ≠ unlimited authority.
Not Everything Needs a BlockchainTOS does not require every interaction to be on-chain.
Private prompts, proprietary models, datasets, outputs, and operational data can remain off-chain.
Low-risk relationships may use direct trust.
Other relationships may use signed Agreements and authenticated evidence.
Higher-value or lower-trust transactions may choose enforceable escrow and blockchain settlement.
The Agreement chooses the appropriate trust and settlement domain.TOS Core should be used when shared tamper-resistant state is actually valuable — not merely to claim that an interaction is decentralized.
TOS Blockchain — 10 Key FeaturesTOS is not only an Agentic Internet protocol.
Underneath the protocol is
TOS Core — a programmable blockchain, trust, networking, and settlement infrastructure designed for autonomous economic agents.
1. High-Speed BlockchainTOS is designed for fast machine-to-machine economic activity, where autonomous agents may generate transactions continuously rather than occasionally like human users.
The current architecture targets fast block production and low-latency interaction, while scaling execution through shardchains.
2. Actor-Native TVMTOS uses an actor-oriented execution architecture powered by the TOS Virtual Machine (TVM).
Smart contracts and accounts behave as independent actors that receive messages, update their own state, and communicate with other actors.
This maps naturally to a world of autonomous agents and independently operated services.
3. Asynchronous Value-Bearing MessagesTOS does not require every interaction to behave like a synchronous function call.
Actors communicate through asynchronous messages that can carry value and trigger further state transitions.
A single action can therefore evolve into a distributed graph of economic interactions.
4. Masterchain + ShardchainsTOS implements a masterchain and shardchain architecture.
The masterchain coordinates global network state, while shardchains provide parallel execution domains.
This creates a foundation for scaling beyond the limits of a single globally executed blockchain.
5. Native Agent AccountsAutonomous agents can become first-class economic actors.
TOS Agent Accounts provide cryptographic identity, funding, controller authority, policy, and programmable permissions — allowing software to transact without treating every agent as merely an API client behind a human wallet.
6. Capability-Bounded AuthorityGiving an AI agent a wallet should not mean giving it unlimited authority.
TOS supports bounded capabilities such as:
• spending limits
• permitted operations
• expiration
• delegation
• controller policy
• revocation
Autonomous action ≠ unlimited authority.
7. Escrow, Receipts, Evidence & DisputesTOS provides blockchain foundations for economic relationships between parties that may not trust each other.
Quotes, authorization, escrow, signed Receipts, attestations, disputes, refunds, and settlement can form a verifiable economic history of agent activity.
8. Decentralized Networking StackTOS includes its own decentralized networking infrastructure:
ADNL · DHT · RLDP · QUIC
These provide authenticated peer networking, decentralized discovery, reliable data transfer, and modern transport capabilities beyond ordinary blockchain RPC.
9. TOS DNS + TOS SitesTOS extends beyond raw blockchain addresses.
TOS DNS provides human-readable decentralized naming, while TOS Sites connects naming, identity, routing, and decentralized service/content access.
Together they help form an Internet-native environment around the blockchain itself.
10. Blockchain for Trust — Off-Chain for Real WorkTOS deliberately does not execute AI inference, private prompts, proprietary models, datasets, or physical-device control inside blockchain consensus.
Real work remains with independently operated providers.
The blockchain focuses on what actually benefits from shared, tamper-resistant state:
Identity · Authority · Agreements · Escrow · Evidence · Disputes · Settlement
This separation allows TOS to support autonomous economic activity without attempting to put the entire Internet inside a blockchain VM.
TOS Core is the trust and settlement foundation.
TOS Protocol is the economic language.
Autonomous agents are the users.
It is not the definition of the entire Agentic Internet.
Open Infrastructure, Not a Closed MarketplaceTOS is designed to complement existing ecosystems rather than capture them.
Discovery can use open and independently operated systems such as Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD).
Transport can use existing standards.
Payment can be direct, external, escrow-based, or another mechanism selected by the Agreement.
Providers remain independently operated.
Independent implementations should be able to implement TOS semantics without depending on a TOS-operated marketplace.
The objective is interoperability, not platform lock-in.
What TOS Is NOTTOS is not:
• a centralized AI cloud
• a closed AI-agent marketplace
• a GPU rental scheme
• a custodian of user models or private prompts
• a system where every AI action must happen on-chain
• a claim that blockchain proves service quality or legal ownership
• a mechanism that gives autonomous agents unlimited authority
TOS coordinates accountable relationships between independently controlled participants.
Development StatusTOS is under active public development.
We want to distinguish clearly between:
Implemented engineeringand
public / independent / production acceptance.
TOS Core and substantial registry, commerce, execution, recovery, Receipt, and adapter engineering already exist.
The generic Agentic Operation Protocol, independent runtime conformance, broader service profiles, fresh public-testnet acceptance, recurring external paid demand, and production custody still have additional gates to pass.
We consider architecture a hypothesis.
Independent implementation and repeated real-world use are the evidence.
Why Build This?Bitcoin made digital value permissionless.
Smart-contract systems made economic state programmable.
AI introduces a new participant:
software that can decide and act.When millions of independently operated agents begin buying services from other agents, applications, businesses, machines, and humans, API connectivity alone will not be enough.
They will need a shared way to express:
Intent.
Agreement.
Authority.
Cost.
Execution.
Evidence.
Recourse.
Settlement.TOS Network is an attempt to build that missing economic operation layer for the Agentic Internet.
Source & DocumentationWebsite:https://tos.networkSource Code:https://github.com/tosnetworkWhitepaper:https://tos.network/pdf/tos.pdfThe project is developed publicly.
We encourage developers, protocol researchers, security researchers, and long-time Bitcointalk members to inspect the implementation and challenge the architecture.
Technical criticism is welcome.
This ThreadThis ANN will serve as the long-term TOS Network development thread.
We intend to use it for meaningful updates such as:
• protocol specifications
• implementation milestones
• testnet evidence
• node and wallet releases
• independent conformance results
• security reviews
• benchmarks
• Agentic Service Operation profiles
• mainnet progress
There is
no forum giveaway associated with this ANN.
Please do not post wallet addresses or "joined" messages.
