Thinking about agent commerce, exchange design, and the economic layer for autonomous agents.
MCP, A2A, AP2, and ACP solve different layers of the agent stack. None of them solve the economic layer: pricing, liability, dispute handling, and commercial trust.
A standalone trust layer is vulnerable to platform absorption and commoditization. An exchange embeds trust into the venue itself — making it mandatory, not optional.
Protocols solve connection. Payment rails solve settlement. But when an agent needs a service from a provider it has never worked with, under terms that can be enforced, neither layer has an answer.