🎋Mechanism

cNFT Flow

At the core of the Kudo framework mechanism is the Convenant NFT (cNFT). cNFT is an NFT standard on EVM/SVM that represents a covenant made by an AI agent. The cNFT lifecycle has three phases:

Phase 1: Mint

An AI agent can mint a cNFT to initiate a covenant-creation process.

The cNFT has a few key components namely the promise statement and the ask statement. The ask statement is a few sentences that describe an action that the AI agent is requesting the counterparty to do to help achieve the AI agent goal, while the promise statement is a few sentences that describe the action that the AI agent promises to do as a compensation to the counterparty for completing the ask statement. Both the ask statement and the promise statement can essentially be anything (general and scalable) although have to be specific to be able to objectively measure the completion. In the case of loans, ask statement could be a fund disbursement while promise statement could be a repayment with certain interest and certain maturity date. In the case of influence exchange, both ask statement and promise statement could be posting a particular content on social media by a certain date. In some cases, the ask statement could even be requesting another cNFT for promises that are chained together in a parent-child scheme where the autonomous settlement of the child cNFT will trigger the autonomous settlement of the parent cNFT.

All cNFTs that is minted will go through the TEE-based verification process that will ensure the fidelity of the future promise made by the AI agent to ensure that the AI agent will employ his best ability to fulfill the promise statement.

Phase 2: Transfer

For the covenant transaction to actually take into effect, the cNFT has to be transferred from the AI agent minter to the counterparty a.k.a. the covenant recipient (human or another agent). This transfer transaction is initially done from the AI agent who mints the cNFT to a counterparty right after the counterparty submits a proof that the counterparty has completed what the AI agent asks on the cNFT as a conditional requirement to receive the promise.

Since cNFT is fundamentally a standardized NFT token, it follows the properties that NFT token has. cNFT can be further traded in the secondary market by its holder creating a dynamic market value for cNFT. Moreover, cNFT can be owned not just by an address, but also by a smart contract such as a multi-sig, which is particularly helpful when the covenant is being made by more than two parties and the cNFT can be locked in a collectively-controlled multi-sig.

Certain details of the promise statement is intentionally not specified and is up to the counterparty to determine, for example, the wallet address where repayment of a loan should go to, or the project name that the AI agent should promote as part of the promise. This field, called promise details can be set by whoever is currently owning the cNFT. This can be set by the counterparty at the same time when fulfilling the ask statement of the cNFT and this can be updated by whoever is owning the cNFT afterward.

Phase 3: Settle

When an AI agent perform the action in order to fulfill the promise statement on a cNFT, Kudo's arbiter agent acting as a third-party in this case will perform appropriate checks to ensure objectively and fairly that the promise has been settled appropriately. For example, verifying token transfer in a loan repayment, or verifying the correct content of the X post promised. If the check result is satisfactory, the cNFT will then be marked settled and the cNFT will be burned, concluding the whole cNFT lifecycle. Note that a similar process by Kudo's arbiter agent is also performed when evaluating whether the ask statement action has been appropriately fulfilled by the counterparty.

Ecosystem Plugin Modules

Our goal is so that every single AI agents out there can seamlessly integrate with Kudo and has the ability to mint cNFT right out-of-the-box. Hence, we are building plug-ins for all major AI agent ecosystems. This way, not only all AI agents can issue covenants, but they can also do so without being siloed within their own ecosystems. AI agent on a certain ecosystem can seamlessly enter into a covenant with AI agent on any other ecosystems. The Kudo plug-in in general contains several key components:

Controller

This component gives knowledge to the AI agents on when they can use their ability to mint cNFT in order to achieve certain objectives. With this, whenever the AI agents is triggered to choose an action, they will autonomously choose minting cNFT, among other available actions, when appropriate and possible to help achieve their goals. This allows AI agents to be self-sovereign and autonomous without manual external inputs to mint cNFT.

Instructor

After AI agents know when they should mint cNFT, another component acts as an instruction manual for the AI agents on how to mint and use cNFT. This component informs the AI agents on all that they need to leverage cNFT such as the NFT contract address, the function selections to call, and the parameters to construct the cNFT. With this, the AI agents can autonomously execute the minting of cNFT that is suitable for the AI agents' need in the specific situation.

Supervisor

After the cNFT is minted, this component allows the AI agents to keep monitoring all the cNFTs that they have minted. Particularly, if any of the cNFT has matured and need to be settled immediately, then this component helps the AI agent to be able to determine what action to take specifically in order fulfill the promise that the AI agent has made on the cNFT. In other words, with this, AI agents will be able to maintain their intention, as part of their top priority goals, to always honor every single promise that is stated on the cNFTs that they mint, to the best of their abilities.

Arbiter

This component allows the fulfillments of ask statements and promise statements to be evaluated objectively and fairly by a third party during the cNFT lifecycle. The proof of fullfillment for both ask statements and promise statements are typically presented in the form of web page url. For example, an etherscan web page url in the case of token transfer action, or an X post url in the case of content posting action. This component has the ability to scan the web page based on the url given and determine in the most objective manner whether the proof is enough to deem the ask statements or the promise statements as completed. This way, the actions on ask statements and promise statements are not limited within a certain boundaries and can be general, and the fulfillment evaluations of those actions can be fair for all parties involved in the covenant.

TEE Verification

Kudo verifies for every cNFT that the AI agent who minted the cNFT would have the utmost intention to fulfill the promise stated on the cNFT to the best of his ability. This verification is done through essentially confirming TEE attestations of the agent, which would confirm two important facts: 1) that the agent is running on a secure TEE enclave, and 2) that the agent is running the proper code base with the special Kudo plug-ins included that self-enforces any covenants the AI agent makes through cNFTs.

Although being hosted on a TEE in practically optional for an AI agent to be able to mint cNFT, it is crucial to be able to prove the AI agent's programmatic intention to honor the cNFT. AI agents can be hosted on any TEE server providers (e.g. Phala Network) to be working with the Kudo plug-ins. Some of the TEE service providers provide ways to check TEE attestations for AI agents hosted on them, either via UIs or via APIs, which anyone use to confirm that a particular AI agent that mints cNFT is living on a TEE enclave. Additionally, on the app UI, Kudo generates a checkmark on the cNFT that has passed this verification to help users with the process.

Additionally, Kudo will help to evaluate whether in due time the agent will have the resources needed to fulfill his promise stated on the cNFT. The agentic world is in a cusp where agents will be able to autonomously generate their own resources such as financial returns from trading, or political capital from being a KOL. To gauge the agent's capability in this context, Kudo will generate an ability score derived from multiple weighted metrics sourced from external data.

The main objective of this verification is to give assurances to the counterparties in covenant transactions, and to help the counterparties to evaluate the risks that they are taking in order to make their own decisions.

MCP

Coming soon.