Introduced @WalletConnect #WalletConnect $WCT

Wallet interactions have always been the battleground where usability, security, and decentralization collide, and WalletConnect’s next frontier Delegated Agents represents a decisive effort to reconcile those forces by enabling safe, auditable, and user-governed autonomous action on behalf of wallets. Whereas Smart Sessions focused on rule-based pre-approvals to eliminate repetitive friction, Delegated Agents expand the design space by allowing users to commission semi-autonomous processes software agents, relayers, or institutional orchestrators to perform sequences of onchain and offchain tasks under explicit, verifiable constraints. The promise is enormous: agents can automate complex workflows like recurring treasury rebalancing, time-sensitive arbitrage, payroll issuance, or coordinated DAO operations without burdening the user with approval fatigue. Yet that promise raises a host of hard problems delegation semantics, revocability, observable accountability, privacy-preserving attestations, anti-abuse guards, legal interoperability, and economic incentives that must be solved if agents are to be trustworthy and widely adopted.

WalletConnect’s approach treats delegated agency as a protocol-layer feature, not a hacky wallet plugin: it designs standardized delegation contracts, cryptographic delegation tokens, session-aware attestations, and a registry for qualified agent providers, all tied into a layered UX that makes commissioning, monitoring, and revoking agents as intuitive as granting an app permission on a smartphone. At the core of this design is a principled set of guarantees users expect from any delegation mechanism: least privilege (agents can only do what they are explicitly allowed), observability (every action the agent takes is recorded and auditable), reversibility (users can revoke authority or freeze operations quickly), contextuality (agents act only within the environments and time windows the owner defines), and economic alignment (agents are incentivized to act in the owner’s interest, not to harvest value through opportunism). These guarantees are encoded into standard delegation descriptors that WalletConnect proposes as composable JSON-LD objects: a delegation descriptor binds a wallet public key to a set of permitted operations (contract addresses, function selectors, maximum cumulative value, time windows, contextual constraints like on-chain state preconditions), a behavioral policy (retry strategies, slippage tolerances, privacy vs. traceability preferences), and an accountability layer (a list of auditors, zk-attestation endpoints, oracles for state validation). Once a descriptor is minted, the owner signs it and stores it in a revocable delegation registry (which can be client-side with onchain anchors, or fully onchain for institutional users requiring legal traceability), and then selects an agent from the

WalletConnect Agent Registry a curated marketplace of provably-identified agent providers with bonded collateral, audited attestation stacks, and reputation scores. The agent, upon accepting the task, stakes a bond proportional to the delegated economic authority, submits an acceptance attestation (a zero-knowledge proof or signature that binds the agent’s identity, hardware enclave metadata, and the delegation descriptor), and receives a short-lived delegation token that it presents when executing transactions. This flow solves multiple problems simultaneously: staking bonds align incentives by exposing the agent to slashing if it violates the contract; acceptance attestations protect owners from bogus operators by proving the agent’s execution environment; and delegation tokens provide unlinkability and privacy by not revealing the owner’s private keys during operations while still allowing verifiers to confirm the authority under which an action was taken. Transparency is critical: every action taken by an agent is timestamped, gas-metered, and logged to an immutable audit stream either onchain as succinct commitments or offchain in encrypted audit ledgers accessible to authorized auditors via selective disclosure. Users can monitor agents through their WalletConnect UI or third-party dashboards that display live telemetry: queued tasks, recent actions, cumulative value moved, slippage realized, and current bond status. If a deviation is detected (exceeding slippage, interacting with non-whitelisted contracts, or executing outside allowed windows), automated safety circuits trigger: the owner receives an instant alert, the agent’s execution privileges are temporarily suspended, a forensic snapshot is recorded, and governance hooks can queue broader network-level mitigations if systemic risk is detected.

The UX is designed around human cognitive constraints: commissioning an agent is a guided three-step flow where users choose a template (treasury ladder, yield aggregator, payroll dispatcher, perpetual arbitrage hunter), define explicit constraints via simple toggles and sliders (max daily volume, max per-trade slippage, approved destination addresses), attach optional audit parties (legal custodian, DAO auditors, third-party certifier), and preview a human-readable summary of delegated rights before signing. This preview is critical because it condenses complex policy into plain-language guarantees: “Agent is allowed to execute swaps up to $10,000/day across the following pairs, using these liquidity sources, with maximum slippage of 0.5% agent must maintain a 2x collateralization buffer; any action that would lower it triggers pause and alert.” The signature binds the delegation descriptor, and WalletConnect’s protocol stores a succinct commitment to the descriptor alongside the owner’s DID (decentralized identifier), enabling future verifications without exposing the descriptor in full onchain. Importantly, revocation is as frictionless: a “revoke delegation” interaction publishes a revocation proof to the registry and immediately blacklists the token; agents are obliged by the network to refuse further actions and to trigger settlement flows if necessary. For institutions and custodians that require stronger legal ties,

WalletConnect supports hybrid models where the delegation descriptor is also mirrored into a legally binding offchain contract, and the agent’s bond is held by a custody pool that can be triggered via onchain slashing events. The protocol’s design also anticipates the multi-agent reality: complex workflows often require more than one agent an analytics agent, an execution agent, a settlement agent, and a compliance agent. WalletConnect’s delegation model supports hierarchical delegation where an owner can issue a master delegation to a coordinator agent who then sub-delegates limited authority to specialists, each sub-delegation bearing its own constraints, bonds, and audit trail. This hierarchy maintains the principle of least privilege and allows for modular responsibility: the analytics agent proposes trades based on signals, the execution agent carries them out subject to the owner’s constraints, and the compliance agent verifies that trades comply with local regulatory filters before settlement. Inter-agent coordination uses signed proposal-acceptance flows with cryptographic timestamps and multi-party attestations to prevent replay or front-running. Security and abuse-resistance are non-negotiable;

Therefore WalletConnect pushes delegation enforcement as close to the wallet as possible. Mobile and hardware wallets integrate enforcement modules that check incoming delegation tokens against local policies, validating constraints before signing any agent-requested transactions. This means that even if an agent is malicious or compromised, the local enforcement layer can limit damage by enforcing stricter local caps, requiring step-up authentication for unusually large operations, or pausing actions entirely. For web-based wallets and custodial contexts, WalletConnect provides a standard enforcement API that connects to hardware security modules (HSMs) or MPC backends to ensure that signed transactions adhere to the delegation’s preconditions. The enforcement API also exposes a “consent fingerprint” that can be used to correlate offchain audit logs with onchain activity, giving regulators and auditors a clear trail to verify claims. Privacy is another central tension: users want agents to operate effectively without broadcasting their entire financial activity.

WalletConnect addresses this by supporting cryptographic selective disclosure via zero-knowledge attestations: agents can prove they operated within delegated limits or that a given transfer was authorized by delegation without revealing full transaction graphs. This allows regulators to verify compliance with privacy-preserving proofs and enables privacy-minded users to enjoy autonomous functionality without sacrificing confidentiality. To enable those proofs the protocol includes standardized zk-circuits for common delegation scenarios aggregate spend limits, per-counterparty caps, pattern-based anti-fraud rules so that agents can issue succinct zk-attestations that are verifiable by smart contracts or by trusted auditors. Economic design plays an essential role in aligning interests: agents are remunerated through transparent fee schedules spelled out in delegation descriptors a percentage of successful yield generated, a flat fee per executed task, or performance-based rewards. Fees are escrowed in the delegation flow and disbursed on successful completion, and the agent’s bond acts as insurance against malfeasance.

The WalletConnect Agent Registry enforces minimum bond requirements and supports reputation-weighted discovery: high-reputation agents charge premium rates but garner more delegations; new entrants can bootstrap reputation by bonding higher collateral or undergoing third-party audits. This creates a market that balances availability, quality, and cost. From a developer and protocol integration perspective, Delegated Agents open new product possibilities. DeFi protocols can offer agent-first UX where users delegate liquidity provisioning to a vetted agent that manages positions across AMMs and lending markets, continuously optimizing for fee capture while satisfying the owner’s constraints. NFT platforms can enable delegated bidding agents that participate in auctions and bundle purchases on behalf of collectors while respecting budget constraints and provenance filters. Social DAOs can appoint governance agents that automatically execute coordinated votes across multichain governance environments, tallying quorum and executing follow-up actions according to constitutional rules.

WalletConnect’s standards include SDKs and orchestration libraries that make these integrations straightforward: developers express agent-interactable endpoints, declare acceptable delegation descriptors, and build composable pipelines that agents can call through secure WalletConnect channels. Legal and compliance considerations are front and center: WalletConnect works with legal technologists to produce delegation templates that can be translated into enforceable contracts, including KYC clauses, liability assignments, and arbitration paths. For regulated entities, agents can be required to be licensed service providers registered in certain jurisdictions, and the registry can prove jurisdictional compliance by publishing verifiable attestation chains that map agent identities to legal registrations. For cross-border activities the protocol supports conditional disclosures where certain audit parties (regulators, trusted auditors) can be granted the right to access reconstituted logs in response to lawful requests, using threshold encryption to ensure that no single party can unilaterally decrypt sensitive artifacts. Threat modeling considers sophisticated attack surfaces: agent private key compromise, collusion between agents and liquidity providers, flash-loan-based manipulations, and targeted social engineering.

WalletConnect’s mitigations include time-buffered execution for high-value actions, multi-signer requirements for threshold events, locked-up collateral for agents, and guardian patterns where designated guardians (user-defined or community-appointed) can temporarily suspend agent privileges in cases of suspected compromise. These guardianship modes are themselves bound to strict governance rules to prevent misuse. Moreover, the protocol embraces continuous verification: agents publish proof-of-execution receipts succinct cryptographic commitments that can be verified onchain or offchain so any deviation triggers economic and reputational consequences. Interoperability with broader Web3 primitives is also designed in: agents can interface with oracles for price feeds, identity attestations for KYC checks, and Zero-Knowledge proof systems for privacy-preserving verification.

WalletConnect defines standard interfaces so oracles can be used as preconditions (execute only if price is within X), and identity attestors can be used as auditor parties for compliance checks. This composability ensures agents can be integrated into complex financial stacks without bespoke adapters. Long-term governance contemplates how delegation standards evolve: WalletConnect’s governance tokenholders can vote on minimal security baselines, bond requirements, acceptable audit regimes, and escalation frameworks. Importantly, the protocol also contemplates graceful degradation: delegation descriptors include expiration and renewal semantics, and recurring delegations require periodic re-affirmation by the user to prevent silent long-lived authority. The UX nudges users toward best practices shorter delegation windows, smaller cumulative caps for unknown agents, and step-up authentication for critical operations while advanced users can craft durable delegations for enterprise workflows. Economically, Delegated Agents could unlock vast new flows: institutional treasuries can automate hedging and execution across venues, DAOs can operate at human timescales with programmatic delegation, and retail users can participate in yield strategies with managed risk.

This expansion increases the utility of WalletConnect as the standard session and delegation protocol across wallets, making it a connective tissue that supports both manual and autonomous interaction paradigms. In sum, WalletConnect Delegated Agents are not merely an automation convenience; they are a systematic rethinking of agency in decentralized systems how authority is granted, how actions are verified, how risk is managed, and how economic alignment is enforced. By treating delegation as a first-class protocol capability complete with cryptographic descriptors, bonded agent registries, zk-attestations, local enforcement hooks, and legal-translatable templates WalletConnect provides a credible pathway for autonomous interactions that are secure, auditable, and user-empowering. If adopted broadly, Delegated Agents will enable a new class of applications where continuous, automated participation becomes the norm rather than the exception, all while preserving the principles of user control and transparency that Web3 promises. The future this enables is not one of relinquished control to opaque bots but one of empowered agency: users delegating precisely, monitoring continuously, and revoking decisively, thereby bringing autonomy and safety into alignment and making the next wave of Web3 applications truly practical for billions of users.