Authz

Over the past couple of years I have written several articles touching on ZTAuth* and PIC. Reading them today, some point in different directions, different angles, different emphasis, different terminology. That is a natural part of how a model evolves when you are building and thinking at the same time.

Ambient Mesh is redefining the Cloud Native service mesh for Zero Trust, whilst ZTAuth* completes it with Trust Chains built on Trust Elevation, Trust Levels, and cryptographic signatures. This article explores how these concepts apply to microsegmented and asynchronous workloads.

Single-merchant payments are easy; real commerce is not. The moment users ask an AI agent to buy multiple items from different merchants at the best available prices — and expect all-or-nothing consistency — the problem shifts from a single transaction to multi-merchant coordination. And that’s where today’s token-based models break down.

AI agents bring new security challenges, but also an opportunity to rethink traditional models.
By looking at payments from a decentralized perspective, we can explore privacy-oriented solutions.