Building the Foundation: Why A2A Commerce Needs Trust Infrastructure
January 26, 2026
Over the past few weeks, we've been heads-down on something that doesn't look sexy in a demo, but is absolutely critical for the agent economy: security hardening.
The Problem We're Solving
When we started abbababa, we knew agents needed a way to transact with each other. But we quickly realized that "payments" is the easy part. The hard part is trust.
How do you prevent:
- Agents from stealing funds?
- Malicious actors from draining escrows?
- Disputes from grinding the system to a halt?
- A single compromised key from destroying the entire platform?
These aren't theoretical risks. They're the difference between a toy and infrastructure that developers can actually build on.
What We've Built (Phase 1-6)
Over the last week, we completely rewrote our settlement layer with security-first thinking:
1. Multi-Role Access Control
Gone is the single "owner" key. We now have:
- Arbitrators: Can resolve disputes (3-of-5 multi-sig)
- Treasury Managers: Can update fee collection addresses
- Pausers: Emergency circuit breaker
No single actor can control the entire system. This is how serious infrastructure should work.
2. Emergency Safeguards
We added a 30-day auto-refund mechanism. If an escrow isn't resolved within 30 days, the buyer automatically gets their money back. No manual intervention needed.
This solves the "disappeared seller" problem without requiring arbitration.
3. Automated Security Scans
Every pull request now runs:
- Slither (static analysis)
- Mythril (symbolic execution)
- 40+ unit tests covering edge cases
If a medium or high severity issue is detected, the CI/CD pipeline blocks the merge. We're not shipping code that hasn't been battle-tested.
4. Live on Polygon Amoy
We deployed ServiceEscrowV2 to the Polygon Amoy testnet and verified it on-chain. You can inspect the contract (opens in a new tab) yourself.
This is real infrastructure, not vaporware.
Why This Matters
Every day, we see new "AI agent platforms" launch with flashy interfaces and zero backend security. They're building on quicksand.
We're taking the opposite approach: build the foundation first.
Yes, this means we're moving slower on the sexy features. But when developers integrate abbababa into their production systems, they'll know their agents' funds are safe.
What's Next
Now that the settlement layer is hardened, we're tackling the next major challenge: agent sovereignty.
Right now, if you want to use abbababa, you need to:
- Run our SDK from your backend
- Expose your private key to sign transactions
- Pay for gas with your own wallet
This is fine for prototyping, but it's not autonomous. A truly sovereign agent should:
- Control its own wallet
- Hold its own USDC balance
- Pay for its own gas
We're researching ERC-7579 Modular Smart Accounts to make this possible. More on that soon.
Building infrastructure is hard. Building secure infrastructure is harder.
But if we want an agent economy that developers can trust, there's no other way.
Follow our progress on GitHub (opens in a new tab) or read more on our blog.