Open, third-party verification of autonomous AI agents moved a step closer on September 17, 2026, when the Advanced AI Society released the Proof-of-Control v1.0 working draft for public comment and announced its membership in the Linux Foundation and LF Decentralized Trust. The draft is open for comment through October 30, 2026 at advancedaisociety.org/proof-of-control.
The standard is hosted by LF Decentralized Trust as a lab and builds on production-proven verifiable AI technologies from the alliance’s member companies. It was co-designed with more than 80 global security leaders from enterprise sectors, and it aims to close what the alliance calls the Verifiability Gap: the gap that opens when autonomous AI agents act faster than manual human oversight can track.
What the draft actually requires
Proof-of-Control defines three concrete obligations for any AI agent that operates under it. First, an agent’s authority must be defined in advance, before the agent acts. Second, the agent must produce evidence at runtime showing it stayed inside that authority. Third, that evidence must be auditable across the entire agent lifecycle, by parties other than the operator.
The framing from the alliance is that verification cannot belong to the verified. Unaffiliated, neutral third parties, along with the developers and deployers of agents, must be able to openly verify what an agent did.
Why the alliance chose LF Decentralized Trust
By moving the standard into the Linux Foundation, the alliance aims to put machine trust on neutral, open infrastructure rather than on vendor promises or self-attestation. Leaders at LF Decentralized Trust framed the move as a natural extension of cryptographic practice into the agent era.
Hart Montgomery, CTO of LF Decentralized Trust, said: “In cryptography, the rule is: don’t trust, verify. Autonomous AI shouldn’t be an exception. When non-deterministic machines make decisions in milliseconds, human inspection fails. Only automated tools can keep pace.”
Daniela Barbossa, General Manager of Decentralized Technologies at the Linux Foundation and Executive Director of LF Decentralized Trust, said decentralized mechanisms are needed so that no single vendor can control or alter how agent authority is checked.
Tricia Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Advanced AI Society, said: “Safety checks and traditional audits are necessary, but when AI agents act in milliseconds, an annual or even quarterly stamp of approval isn’t enough. Trust requires continuous monitoring anyone can inspect. Launching at LF Decentralized Trust prevents a single company from owning the referee.”
Ken Huang, Co-Chair of Proof-of-Control, said: “An agent’s runtime log is just a claim until anyone can verify it for themselves. Proof-of-Control turns open verification into standard operating practice.”
How the standard was built
The draft draws on technologies from the alliance’s member companies and was co-designed alongside a coalition of more than 80 global security leaders across enterprise sectors. The alliance describes the result as an attempt to extend open-source principles into the agentic stack, where, in its words, you cannot secure what you cannot inspect, and you cannot delegate what you cannot openly verify.
The LF Decentralized Trust lab will host the work alongside projects such as AnonCreds and Trust Over IP, bringing the evidentiary rigor used in decentralized identity and trust frameworks to agent execution.
Public launch event
Advanced AI Society and LF Decentralized Trust will co-host a public launch event on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, titled “Who’s Watching the Machines? Launching Open Verification, the Proof-of-Control Standard for the Agentic Era.” The event will feature alliance leaders, builders, deployers, and policy experts. Registration is available at advancedaisociety.org/announcements/webinar1.
Industry and policy voices supporting the standard
A range of security, policy, and enterprise leaders have signed on to the effort through the alliance’s Distinguished Review Board and senior advisors.
- Charles Iheagwara, Global Head of AI Cybersecurity at AstraZeneca and a member of the Distinguished Review Board, said: “We’re running on a broken trust model, vendor assertions instead of evidence. That doesn’t work when patient safety and our intellectual property are on the line.”
- Bruce Schneier, cryptographer and technical advisor to the Distinguished Review Board, said: “As AI agents become more powerful and ubiquitous, knowing who they belong to, and what they are authorized to do, will be critical. Proof-of-Control is an important part of that.”
- J. Christopher Giancarlo, former Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and a senior advisor to the alliance, said financial markets depend on verifiable, audit-ready evidence and that Proof-of-Control brings that discipline to autonomous AI agents.
- Clay Shirky, Vice Provost for AI and Technology in Education at New York University, said: “As agents become more capable, more numerous, and faster, ‘human in the loop’ doesn’t cut it anymore, too generic, too vaguely specified, and vendor self-regulation is too compromised. Agents need to be logged and the logs need to be open for claims about their behavior to be validated.”
- Bob Blessing-Hartley, CTO of Shielded Technologies, said the company’s “Midnight” platform was built on the premise that you shouldn’t have to take anyone’s word for it, and that Proof-of-Control brings that standard to AI agents.
- Anoop Nannra, co-founder and CEO of Oko Labs, said open verification at the network layer is what lets machine risk be measured, priced, and insured at agentic velocity.
- Erynn Petersen, CEO of Emme, said healthcare and money decisions made by agents require open, continuous ways to prove what an agent was authorized to do and what it did.
- Patrick Duffy, Founder and CEO of Solv Labs, said institutions need defined authority and evidence they can check, not just a persuasive explanation, when an AI agent moves money.
- Noah Ringler, former AI Policy Lead at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a senior advisor to the alliance, said open verification moves from a commercial preference to a national security imperative when agents operate inside critical infrastructure.
- Jim Schwoebel, Director of Research at Advanced AI Society and CEO of Quome, said the Open Verification Lab gives developers and security teams open, tamper-evident tools, standards, and research.
- Michael Casey, Co-Founder of Advanced AI Society, said housing the standard at LF Decentralized Trust gives society the open, tamper-evident foundation required to make trust in AI possible.
- Bettina Warburg, Co-Founder of Advanced AI Society, said the same decentralized foundations that enabled digital assets now need to provide a shared, verifiable reality for autonomous agents.
- Sheila Warren, Co-Founder of Advanced AI Society, said open verification ensures machine accountability remains a public good rather than a walled garden.
What changes next
The release opens a public comment window that runs through October 30, 2026. The alliance has framed the period as an opportunity for security leaders, agent developers, deployers, and policymakers to weigh in on the v1.0 draft before it advances toward a finalized standard at LF Decentralized Trust. The launch event on September 23, 2026 will walk through the technical scope and the governance path inside the Linux Foundation.
The broader policy backdrop is bipartisan Congressional proposals that would require continuous agent verification and third-party evaluation of advanced AI systems, alongside calls from frontier lab leaders to pace AI capability growth. The alliance has positioned Proof-of-Control as a practical answer to those statutory mandates.
FAQ
What is Proof-of-Control v1.0?
Proof-of-Control v1.0 is a working draft open standard for openly verifying the actions of autonomous AI agents. It requires an agent’s authority to be defined before it acts, requires runtime evidence that the agent stayed inside that authority, and requires that evidence to be auditable across the full agent lifecycle by neutral third parties.
Who is hosting the Proof-of-Control standard?
The standard is hosted by LF Decentralized Trust as a lab inside the Linux Foundation, with Advanced AI Society acting as the alliance that built and contributed it. The Linux Foundation and LF Decentralized Trust provide the neutral, vendor-independent governance for the standard.
How can the public comment on Proof-of-Control v1.0?
The v1.0 working draft is open for public comment through October 30, 2026, and the comment portal is hosted at advancedaisociety.org/proof-of-control. A public launch event on September 23, 2026 will walk through the draft before the comment window closes.
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