Ecosystem Map
Where PEAC fits in the agent, commerce, payment, and evidence stack.
PEAC is the evidence layer.
It does not replace communication protocols, checkout flows, payment rails, identity systems, or observability. It records what happened across them in a form that can be carried, verified, and audited across organizational boundaries.
Modern agent systems are becoming a stack
The ecosystem around agents is getting broader, not narrower. Some systems help agents discover tools and exchange tasks. Some define commerce and checkout flows. Some move money. Some establish identity, trust, or authorization.
What happened, under what terms, and how can another party verify it later?
That is the question an evidence layer answers.
The stack
PEAC does not try to absorb the rest of the stack. It sits across it, turning important interactions into portable, signed records.
Some systems move messages. Some move money. Some define identity. PEAC records what happened across them.
Why the stack needs an evidence layer
Without a portable record layer, each system can describe its own part of an interaction, but the full story remains fragmented.
When a dispute starts, a review is needed, or another party needs proof, those fragments often do not travel cleanly across vendors, organizations, or protocol boundaries.
That is why PEAC complements the stack rather than competing with it.
Protocol by protocol
Each layer in the ecosystem has a different job. PEAC works best when those boundaries stay clear.
MCP
Tool and data access between clients and servers. Useful for invocation, structured context exchange, and runtime interoperability.
Not a payment standard, checkout flow, or portable audit format.
PEAC carries signed records alongside MCP interactions so a tool call does not end as local runtime state only.
A2A
Agent-to-agent coordination: discovery, task exchange, and lifecycle. Useful when work moves across agents or systems.
Not a payment protocol or a portable evidence format.
PEAC binds verifiable records to those transitions so multi-agent workflows can be reviewed after the fact.
ACP
Checkout and agentic commerce protocol. Useful for capability negotiation, payment handling, and checkout lifecycle.
Not a general-purpose evidence standard.
PEAC records lifecycle evidence around ACP sessions without overstating what has or has not settled.
UCP
Open commerce protocol for supplier, catalog, order, and checkout flows.
Not an authorization or evidence layer.
PEAC records UCP events while preserving boundaries: order versus payment, request versus fulfillment.
AP2
Authorization and mandates: spending guardrails, approval thresholds, merchant controls.
Not the checkout or transport layer.
PEAC is the evidence layer that can carry and verify records around AP2-governed actions.
paymentauth / MPP
HTTP-native payment challenge and authentication flows.
Not a full trust, dispute, or cross-system evidence layer.
PEAC records the resulting challenge and outcome artifacts in a portable format.
x402
HTTP-native programmatic payment flow: request, challenge, payment, retry.
Not a generalized evidence standard.
PEAC captures and normalizes the evidence that results from that flow.
Identity and trust
ERC-8004, DID, SPIFFE, and related attestation systems for identity, keys, and trust signals.
Not a record of what happened in a specific interaction.
PEAC references those proofs and binds them to concrete interaction records.
Observability
OpenTelemetry, C2PA, in-toto, SCITT for traces, provenance, supply chain, and transparency.
Valuable complements, not competitors.
PEAC composes with these systems. It does not replace them.
What PEAC is not
Those boundaries are part of the design. They keep PEAC neutral, composable, and useful across heterogeneous stacks.
What PEAC adds
Available now
Shipped surfaces, not placeholders.
- ✓MCP integration patterns
- ✓A2A carriage and metadata patterns
- ✓paymentauth / MPP evidence mapping
- ✓x402 v1 and v2 artifact handling
- ✓ACP session lifecycle evidence
- ✓Stripe SPT delegation evidence
- ✓UCP order-versus-payment separation
- ✓Commerce integration kits and runnable examples
What comes next
Deeper interoperability, not more sprawl.
- →Stronger AP2 bridging
- →Stronger ERC-8004 and trust-signal bridging
- →Supply-chain and provenance bridges
- →Evidence normalization across commerce, identity, and runtime ecosystems
Carry a record when the interaction matters
When local logs are enough, keep your logs.
When another party needs proof, carry a record.