Block gave AI agents their own cryptographic ID cards. Why the web blocks every agent by default, and why identity is the toll gate standing in front of agent payments.
Show Notes
Luis and Maya dig into why the web treats every AI agent like a burglar, and what Block's new Buzz platform does about it.
Bots are now about 57% of web traffic, so the default answer to an agent is "blocked" — which punishes the ordinary case of asking your assistant to go check a price. Buzz gives every participant, human or agent, their own cryptographic keys, so work is signed by whoever actually did it. The bigger point: every serious payments rail, from Visa to Mastercard to Google, has independently landed on the same precondition. Nobody hands a wallet to anonymous software. Identity comes first, or nothing comes at all.
Chapters
00:00 Meet your host
00:20 I was wrong on a client call
00:55 What Buzz actually shipped
02:00 Nobody knows you're an agent
02:40 Identity is the toll gate
03:30 Three moves for Monday
04:35 The skeptic ledger
05:15 Where to read the rest
Full written breakdown, with every source and the complete skeptic ledger:
https://growthalchemylab.com/blog/on-the-internet-nobody-knows-youre-an-agent
More episodes: https://contextuallyaware.com
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What product managers can actually build with AI today—and where it still breaks.