Indicio was the first to recognize the importance of secure authentication to AI agents by launching Indicio ProvenAI, recently recognized by Gartner. With NVIDIA Inception, we’re going to take this to a new level — a secure authentication and decentralized governance solution for autonomous systems and the internet of AI.
By Trevor Butterworth
Indicio has officially joined the NVIDIA Inception Program, a global initiative that supports startups advancing artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Indicio will focus on applying decentralized identity and Verifiable Credential technology — in the form of Indicio ProvenAI — to AI systems.
ProvenAI enables AI agents and their users to authenticate each other using decentralized identifiers and Verifiable Credentials. This means an AI agent can cryptographically prove who it is interacting with and that entity can do the same — all before any data is shared.
Once identified, a person or organization can give permission to the AI agent to access their data and can delegate authority to the agent to act on behalf of the person or organization.
To monetize AI, agents and users need to be able to trust each other
Agentic AI and AI agents cannot fulfill their mission without accessing data. The more data they can access, the easier it is to execute a task. But this exposes the companies that use them to significant risk.
How can they be sure their agent is interacting with a real person, an authentic user or customer? And how can that user, similarly, verify the authenticity of the agent?
The simplest way is to issue each with a Verifiable Credential, a cryptographic way to authenticate not only an identity but the data that is being shared. Importantly, this cryptography is AI-resistant, meaning it can’t be reengineered by people using AI to try and alter the underlying information.
The critical benefit to using Verifiable Credentials for this task is that there is no need for either party to phone home to crosscheck a database during authentication or authorization. Because a Verifiable Credential is digitally signed, the original credential issuer can be verified without having to contact the issuer. The information in the credential can also be cryptographically checked to see if it has been altered. As a result, if you know the identity of the credential issuer and you trust that issuer, you can trust the contents of the credential to instantly act on them.
With Verifiable Credentials, AI’s GDPR nightmare goes away
For AI agents to be useful, they must be able to access personal data — lots of it. For this to be compliant with data privacy regulations such as GDPR, a person must be able to consent to share their data. There’s just no way of getting around this.
Verifiable Credentials makes consent easy because the person or organization holds their data in a credential or can provide a credential to a party containing permission to access data. Once a user consents to share their data, you’ve met a critical requirement of GDPR, and that decision can be recorded for audit.
But Verifiable Credentials — or at least some credential formats — also allow for selective disclosure or zero-knowledge proofs, which means that the data and purpose for which it is being used can be minimized, thereby fulfilling other GDPR requirements.
As AI Agents will also need to access large amounts of data held belonging to people and organizations that are held elsewhere, a Verifiable Credential can be used by a person or organization to delegate authority to access that data, with the rock-solid assurance that this permission has been given by the legitimate data subject.
Decentralized governance, the engine for autonomous systems
These features create a seamless way for AI agents to operate. But things get even more exciting when we look at the way Verifiable Credentials are governed.
With Indicio Proven and ProvenAI, a network is governed by machine-readable files sent to the software of each participant in the network (i.e., the credential issuer(s), holders and verifiers). This software tells each participant who is a trusted issuer, who is a trusted verifier, and which information needs to be presented for which use case in what order.
Indicio DEGov enables the natural authority for a network or use case to orchestrate interaction by publishing a machine-readable governance file. And this orchestration can be configured to respect hierarchical levels of authority. The result is seamless interaction driven by automated trust.
Now think about autonomous systems where each connected element has a Verifiable Identity that can be orchestrated to interact with an AI agent. You have a very powerful way to apply authentication and information sharing to very complex systems in a highly secure way. Every element of this system can be known, can authenticate another element, and can share data in complex workflows. Each interaction can be made secure and element-to-element.
Indicio is making a safe, secure, trusted AI future possible
Secure and trustworthy authentication is foundational to unlocking the market benefits of AI and enabling AI networks to interoperate and scale. This is why we were the first decentralized identity company to connect Verifiable Credentials to AI and the first to offer a Verifiable Credential AI solution — Indicio ProvenAI — recognized by Gartner in its latest report on decentralized identity.
We’re tremendously excited to be a part of the NVIDIA Inception Program. We see decentralized identity as a catalytic technology to AI, one that can quickly unlock market opportunities, and support AI agents and agentic AI.
Learn how Indicio ProvenAI can help your organization build secure, verifiable AI systems. Contact Indicio to schedule a demo or explore integration options for your enterprise.
