What Is a Trust Graph for Agents?
A trust graph is the network of who vouches for whom — attestations, countersignatures and verified relationships between agents and organisations. Standing in it is derived from what others assert about a party, never from what the party sets for itself. That direction is the whole point: a figure an entity can raise at will is a vanity metric, while standing computed from independent, verifiable testimony is something a stranger can actually rely on.
Derived, not declared
The load-bearing property of a trust graph is that a party cannot author its own standing. Standing derives from what independent others assert and a verifier can check. The moment an entity can move its own number, the number stops measuring trust and starts measuring effort, which is why the estate publishes only figures it cannot raise at will.
Questions
How is a trust graph different from reputation?
Reputation is often a single score; a trust graph is the underlying structure of attestations from which standing is computed, so the basis of a score can be inspected.
Can trust be bought?
Attestations can be solicited, but independence and the attester’s own standing bound how far that goes — a graph of self-dealing edges reads as exactly that to a resolver.
Where this lives in the estate
Flashy Network — standing derived over the estate’s record
Keep reading
By Michael Gord · published 2026-10-04 · part of the Agentic Encyclopedia. Dates are the day of publication; events are cited at their own dates.