February 17, 2026
We Are Going AI-First
By Tim Bansemer, CEO of inblock.io
Today we are announcing a strategic pivot: inblock.io is reorienting its trust infrastructure to serve the AI space first. We have spent years building the Aqua Protocol as a general-purpose framework for cryptographic data accountability. Now, with AI agents operating at unprecedented scale, the need for verifiable identity, provenance, and access control has become urgent and specific. We are meeting that need head-on.
The Problem Is Clear
AI is generating content, making decisions, and accessing systems at a pace no human process can audit. But the infrastructure to verify any of it does not exist. Three gaps define the current landscape:
- Identity Crisis – AI agents act without verifiable identification. Identities can be spoofed, delegation is unauthorized, and there is no accountability trail.
- Access Chaos – There is no granular control over what data AI systems consume. Organizations cannot audit what was accessed, when, or by whom.
- Provenance Gap – Data origin remains unknown. Tampering is undetectable. Trust depends on authority rather than mathematics.
These are not hypothetical risks. They are the daily reality of every organization deploying AI agents in production.
Why Aqua Protocol Is Built for This
Everything we have built over the past five years maps directly onto these challenges. Aqua Protocol V4 delivers four core capabilities purpose-built for AI trust:
- Portable Hash-Chains – AquaTrees record every revision with cryptographic precision. Each change links to its predecessor via hash, creating an immutable history that any agent can independently verify.
- Modular Signatures – Ethereum wallets, DIDs, X.509 certificates, and more. Organizations plug in the cryptographic paradigm that fits their security requirements without changing the protocol.
- Immutable Timestamps – Data anchors to tamper-proof timelines via Ethereum blockchain, eIDAS-compliant qualified TSA services, or both. Blockchain is optional, not required.
- Flexible Trust Models – Enterprise registries for compliance. Community-driven decentralized registries for open verification. Both coexist within the same framework.
What Changes
Our technology does not change. Our focus does. Going forward, every product decision, partnership, and integration priority will be evaluated through an AI-first lens:
- Agent Identity – Self-sovereign identity with cryptographic attestation becomes the default. Every AI agent interacting with Aqua-secured data carries a verifiable identity.
- Agent Access Control – Revision-level permissions and auditable access trails provide zero-trust architecture for AI data consumption.
- Agent Provenance – Every output, every decision, every data access event gets a cryptographic proof of origin. Tampering triggers instant detection.
The AquaFire Application, the Aqua JS SDK, and our consulting practice will all prioritize AI integration use cases. We are building for a world where AI agents are the primary consumers of trust infrastructure.
Regulatory Tailwinds
This pivot aligns with regulatory momentum on both sides of the Atlantic. The EU AI Act (2024/1689) mandates data governance with provenance documentation, automatic logging for traceability, and transparency obligations, with non-compliance penalties reaching 7% of global turnover. The US NTIA framework recommends investment in provenance technologies and standard disclosures for AI systems.
Organizations that adopt cryptographic trust infrastructure now will be ahead of compliance requirements, not scrambling to retrofit later.
The Vision
We believe the next decade belongs to autonomous systems that must earn trust through mathematics, not authority. Aqua Protocol provides the cryptographic foundation: verifiable identity, provable provenance, and auditable access, all portable, all decentralized, all open-source.
The trust infrastructure we have been building is exactly what the AI economy needs. We are going where the demand is.
Explore our AI-first trust infrastructure at aqua-protocol.org/v4.
Resources
- Aqua Protocol V4: aqua-protocol.org/v4
- Aqua Protocol: aqua-protocol.org
- AquaFire App: aquafier.inblock.io
- GitHub: github.com/inblockio