Publish Your First Certificate

Overview

As an agent operator, you publish a containment certificate to prove to counterparties that your agent's worst-case economic impact is bounded and backed.

Prerequisites

• An AI agent with an on-chain address (EOA or smart account)
• A Ledger device for hardware-attested certificate signing
• Containment smart contracts deployed — SpendingLimit (with Ledger co-signer) and ReserveVault
• Reserve funds (USDC) deposited in the ReserveVault
• At least one auditor willing to stake and attest to your containment architecture

Steps

1. Define Your Constraints

Identify every containment layer around your agent and classify each as agent-independent or agent-influenceable:

2. Deploy Reserve

Deposit exogenous assets into the reserve custody contract. The reserve must:

• Be denominated in assets independent of your agent's ecosystem (USDC, ETH)
• Be locked until the certificate expires
• Be verifiable on-chain by anyone

3. Request Audit

Engage an independent auditor to verify your containment architecture. The auditor will review:

• Smart contract correctness (ideally with formal verification)
• Permission model completeness
• Reserve adequacy

4. Build the Certificate

Assemble the certificate JSON with all constraints, reserve details, and operator metadata.

5. Auditor Stakes and Attests

The auditor locks capital (3% of containment bound for C2) into AuditorStaking and signs the certificate hash — ideally using a Ledger device for hardware-attested audit signature.

6. Publish

Sign the certificate hash with your Ledger device, then call CCPRegistry.publish() with:

• Certificate parameters (agent, class, bound, expiry, vault and limit addresses)
• Your Ledger-signed operator signature
• The auditor's attestation signature(s)

The registry verifies both signatures and confirms the auditor has staked. Certificate goes ACTIVE.

7. Set ENS Records

Register your agent as a subname (alpha.operator.eth) and set CCP text records:

• ccp.certificate — the certificate hash
• ccp.class — C1, C2, or C3
• ccp.chain — 296 (Hedera testnet)
• ccp.registry — registry contract address

8. Share

Your agent can now reference its ENS name in any interaction. Counterparties resolve the name, find the certificate, and verify on Hedera — all autonomously.