AI & ML Paradigm Shift

Introduces Capability-Priced Micro-Markets (CPMM), a micro-economic framework for autonomous AI agent transactions over HTTP 402.

March 19, 2026

Original Paper

Capability-Priced Micro-Markets: A Micro-Economic Framework for the Agentic Web over HTTP 402

Ken Huang, Jerry Huang, Mahesh Lambe, Hammad Atta, Yasir Mehmood, Muhammad Zeeshan Baig, Muhammad Aziz Ul Haq, Nadeem Shahzad, Shailja Gupta, Rajesh Ranjan, Rekha Singhal

arXiv · 2603.16899

The Takeaway

This provides the missing economic layer for the 'Agentic Web,' enabling autonomous agents to negotiate, secure, and pay for capabilities with minimal human oversight. It formalizes agent interactions as games with incomplete information, offering a theoretical path for scalable agent-to-agent economies.

From the abstract

This paper introduces Capability-Priced Micro-Markets (CPMM), a micro-economic framework designed to enable robust, scalable, and secure commerce among autonomous AI agents on the agentic web. The framework addresses the fundamental challenge of economic coordination in decentralized agent ecosystems, where entities must transact with minimal human oversight. CPMM synthesizes three key technologies into a unified system: MIT originated, Project NANDA infrastructure for cryptographically verifiab