The Linux Foundation intends to launch an open standard called the Agent Name Service to give AI agents verifiable identities. The system would extend DNS to link agents to certificates and an uneditable public log.
The service would let users look up an agent to confirm its operator, permissions, and code history. Research cited by the foundation shows 82 percent of executives plan to adopt AI agents in the next one to three years, yet most lack reliable authentication methods.
Under the proposed standard, each agent would receive a DNS-style name such as ans://v1.0.0.my-agent.example.com. Registration would require passing standard DNS and ACME checks before an identity certificate is issued, with every event recorded in a tamper-evident Merkle log.
GoDaddy had already operated a version of the system for months before the Linux Foundation became involved. The company reused its existing certificate infrastructure, which handles more than 100 million active SSL and TLS certificates.
Reference code is available on GitHub under the agentnameservice organization. The main repository contains an MIT-licensed Go implementation that can be started in about 60 seconds using common command-line tools.
