Hierarchical Mandate Tokens for Autonomous Agent Authority (SEP Draft)

[devfelipenunes]

Summary

This proposal introduces a standard interface for issuing non-transferable, revocable Mandate tokens on the Stellar network (Soroban). It allows a sovereign identity (Anchor) to delegate programmable, scoped authority to AI agents or automated systems without sharing private keys.

Motivation

The emerging agentic economy requires AI agents to execute financial transactions and interact with decentralized protocols autonomously. Current methods (like sharing private keys) present extreme custody risks. This SEP solves this by creating a programmable power of attorney: the agent can only act within a pre-defined Scope, and the Anchor retains full, instant revocation rights.

Key Features

Hierarchical Delegation: Allows for Sub-Mandates with narrowing scopes.
On-chain Verification: Standardized verify_authority interface for dApps.
Atomic Revocation: Immediate and cascading invalidation of delegated power.
Soulbound Nature: Mandates are non-transferable and linked to specific agent addresses.

Links

• Discussion: https://github.com/orgs/stellar/discussions/1925

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR adds a new draft SEP to define a Soroban-based “Mandate” authority/delegation interface for autonomous agents, plus a small .gitignore update.

Changes:

• Introduces ecosystem/sep-mandate.md, a draft specification for hierarchical, non-transferable, revocable mandate tokens and a Nexus verification interface.
• Defines core structs, required functions (issue_mandate, revoke_mandate, verify_authority), and required events for indexing.
• Ignores local .worktrees/ directories in .gitignore.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 8 comments.

File	Description
ecosystem/sep-mandate.md	Adds a new SEP draft describing hierarchical mandate delegation and verification on Soroban.
.gitignore	Adds .worktrees/ to ignored paths.

[devfelipenunes]

@copilot apply changes based on the comments in this thread

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 6 comments.

[devfelipenunes]

check

[devfelipenunes]

@copilot apply changes based on the comments in this thread

[devfelipenunes]

Hey @willemneal and @chadoh !

A dev from the Discord community suggested that I reach out to you regarding this draft.

This proposal introduces a standard for Mandate Tokens, designed specifically to solve a major workflow bottleneck in the Agentic Economy: allowing autonomous AI agents to operate on-chain safely. It establishes a cryptographic containment layer directly on Soroban, allowing users to delegate specific permissions, whitelists, and spending limits to an agent without ever exposing their private keys.

Since you both are deeply involved with the ecosystem's developer infrastructure and runtime tooling, I would highly appreciate your technical feedback on this architecture, especially regarding our containment logic and state management.

Looking forward to your thoughts whenever you have some time!

[leighmcculloch]

Hi @devfelipenunes, I noticed that this SEP is being posted at the same time as the discussion meaning this proposal has had no opportunity for public discussion prior to being formalised (see the SEP process). Discussions before hand can gather feedback and build confidence in a proposal before it becomes formalised and may have more success in finding adoption.

Are you wanting to formalise the proposal and for it to be assigned a number and merged now or would you like to focus on the discussion, then revisit formalising once you've gathered feedback? I can merge it now if the intent is to formalise now, just wanted to check before merging. Reply here to let me know.

[devfelipenunes]

Thanks for the tip! I actually tried reaching out on the Discord channels, but the topic didn't get much traction there.

Since this proposal involves specific security and architecture mechanics (like digital identity and Soroban smart contracts), could you do me a favor and tag a few core developers or subject matter experts directly in this PR who usually review these topics?

[leighmcculloch]

directly in this PR

The discussion forum is where folks engage on new proposals. Discussion doesn't happen on PRs because a single proposal may have many PRs and discussion becomes fragmented. That's the reason behind why the SEP process has ideas and proposals get discussed first in the forum, and then a PR comes later once the proposal is being formalised.

If the goal is to find more discussion, I suggest taking the details to:

#1925