Memory for theAutonomous Agent Economy
Building the memory layer for autonomous agent payments, where counterparty evidence outlives the transaction.
Built on
A weak event leaves a tag at one synapse. The tag is the synapse's own state, not a label on it, and it fades within the hour.
Close enough to see a single spine. The tag is already decaying, and nothing has been written down.
Back out. The tagged patch is dimmer than it was when we left it.
Something significant happens elsewhere in the same cell. The neuron synthesises new proteins and they spread through its dendrites, unaddressed, reaching every synapse equally.
Two synapses receive the same supply. The one still carrying a tag captures it and holds what it had. The untagged one does not change at all.
The captured spine is larger than it was, and it stays that way.
What was captured is what can still be recalled. Everything else has been overwritten by ordinary forgetting.
The same order of events, on a substrate that can be audited: evidence written on day 12, marked significant on day 21, still there to be read.
t + 0:00
Frey & Morris, Nature 385:533 (1997)
skip the mechanism ↓OUR VISION
Memory that outlives the transaction
Autonomous agents already pay each other with no human reviewing each one. Every authorization should still be able to reach back to what was observed before it, including what looked like nothing at the time.