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ANAME: The Missing Piece for Agents

Revolutionizing how agents are discovered, referenced, and interacted with in the Web3 era.

2025-03-173 min readFetch.ai

The digital economy has long relied on structured naming services to organize and simplify interactions. The Domain Name System (DNS) was a fundamental breakthrough for the internet, enabling human-readable website addresses instead of cryptic IP addresses.

Now, as the world moves toward Web3 and autonomous software agents, Fetch.ai is proud to announce an updated ANAME feature: Agent Name Service that promises to revolutionize how agents are discovered, referenced, and interacted with in the Web3 era.

The Web3 Equivalent of DNS

In Web2, DNS made the internet user-friendly by mapping IP addresses to domain names like google.com. Similarly, ANAME brings structured, human-readable identities to software agents, ensuring they can be found and interacted with efficiently. Instead of relying on complex cryptographic hashes or wallet addresses, ANAME enables agents to operate under simple, recognizable names like alice.helper or bob.aichat.

With Fetch.ai's agent-based infrastructure growing rapidly, ANAME is set to be as pivotal for Web3 as DNS was for Web2: providing clarity, efficiency, and scalability to a world where autonomous agents handle transactions, data exchanges, and smart contract interactions.

Structured Naming for Autonomous Agents

ANAME introduces a structured domain format similar to traditional web domains. A domain follows the format X.Y, where X is the name and Y is the top-level domain (TLD). In the first phase of the new ANAME update, the following TLDs will be available:

  • .helper
  • .assistant
  • .phoenix
  • .aichat
  • .delegate

This structure enables easy discovery and classification of agents based on their purpose. For instance:

  • support.helper could be an AI-driven customer support assistant
  • john.aichat might represent a personalized AI chatbot
  • market.delegate could be a decentralized trading assistant

Each registered domain allows up to five subdomains, enabling users to organize their agents under a single namespace.

A Critical Layer for the Autonomous Economy

ANAME is a major step toward a seamless, scalable, and interoperable agent-driven economy. As autonomous agents spread across industries, having a structured naming and discovery system becomes critical.

ANAME solves multiple pain points:

  1. Instead of referencing agents using long cryptographic hashes, users can simply interact with x.helper or y.delegate.
  2. Agents can communicate across ecosystems with human-readable addresses, improving integration across platforms.
  3. Domains are registered on-chain and owned by users, ensuring decentralized control with no central authority dictating access.
  4. As the agent ecosystem grows, ANAME provides a structured framework to organize and reference them efficiently.

The ANAME Registration Process

Users can explore and register agent domains through Fetch.ai's Companion App, which integrates seamlessly with the ASI Alliance Web Wallet. The process is straightforward:

  1. Search for an available domain via the ANAME interface. aname_2.png

  2. Purchase and register the domain using FET tokens. aname_5.png

  3. Manage subdomains and agent mappings through a user-friendly dashboard.

  4. Assign administrative roles, such as Admins (who have full control over domain settings) and Writers (who can register agents but not modify configurations). aname_7.png

ANAME represents a foundational layer for the autonomous economy. As Web3 adoption accelerates, structured naming will play a crucial role in ensuring efficient, intuitive, and secure agent interactions.

Bridging Web2 and Web3 for Trust & Validation

As a future enhancement, we plan to bridge Web2 domains with their Web3 counterparts, ensuring that an agent's identity can be verified across both ecosystems. This integration will extend to Agentverse, allowing seamless connections between traditional domain names and their decentralized agent identities. This is the first step toward solving the 'trust problem' in autonomous agents: where users can confidently interact, knowing an agent's legitimacy. Moving forward, we will introduce validation mechanisms to confirm ownership of the associated Web2 domain, further strengthening the integrity and credibility of the agent-driven economy.

Just as DNS was instrumental in bringing billions of users online, ANAME has the potential to onboard millions of autonomous agents, driving the future of AI-driven commerce, decentralized services, and autonomous coordination.


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