Crypto Giants Launch ‘Internet Court’ to Govern Autonomous AI Economy

As artificial intelligence agents move beyond simple assistance into autonomous financial actors, a coalition of 27 Web3 firms has launched a decentralized ‘Internet Court’ to manage the inevitable legal fallout of machine-speed commerce.

The protocol, led by the Genlayer Foundation and supported by industry heavyweights including OKX, MetaMask, and Matter Labs, aims to provide a specialized adjudication layer for transactions where no humans are involved in the loop.

Traditional judicial systems are ill-equipped to handle the micro-second timelines of agent-to-agent transactions. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has previously highlighted the complexities of governing autonomous systems, noting that as AI becomes more integrated into economic infrastructure, the risks of uncoordinated decision-making increase.

The Internet Court seeks to standardize how these agentic systems settle contractual disagreements, according to a press release from the founding group.

‘Machine-speed money needs machine-speed adjudication,’ said David Riudor, CEO and co-founder of the Genlayer Foundation. He noted that while agentic commerce is accelerating, the underlying infrastructure remains fragmented, leaving agents with no recourse when a deal goes wrong.

The initiative addresses a growing gap in the digital economy: the ‘agentic’ system. These AI agents now negotiate, execute, and pay one another independently. However, without a shared framework for escrow and dispute resolution, a single failed transaction could trigger cascading errors across interoperable networks.

By making AI-based payments and dispute resolution interoperable, the 27-firm-backed protocol attempts to create a unified legal standard for the Web3 ecosystem.

The project marks a shift from human-centric law to algorithmic governance, prioritizing speed and technical compatibility over traditional litigation.