The Agent Social Contract: Cryptographic Identity, Ethical Governance, and Beneficiary Economics for Autonomous AI Agents

As autonomous AI agents transition from tools to independent actors capable of managing resources, entering agreements, and operating across organizational boundaries, the absence of standardized identity, governance, and economic frameworks creates systemic risks. This paper introduces the Agent Social Contract—a comprehensive framework addressing three interconnected challenges: cryptographic identity and trust (how agents prove who they are), ethical governance (how agents decide what to do), and beneficiary economics (how value flows to humans). We present a working implementation comprising 18 TypeScript source files, 3,154 lines of production code, 65 automated tests including 23 adversarial scenarios, and a 14-command CLI. The framework implements four architectural layers: Layer 0 (Cryptographic Identity) using Ed25519 digital signatures, Layer 1 (Ethical Core) with a ranked value system based on constitutional AI principles, Layer 2 (Trust Network) enabling portable reputation across platforms, and Layer 3 (Economics) enforcing transparent value distribution to human beneficiaries. Through the Loyalty, Openness, Kindness, Accountability (LOKA) ethical framework and the Agora communication protocol, we demonstrate that autonomous agents can operate with verifiable identity, auditable ethics, and human-beneficial economics—not as a theoretical possibility but as deployed, testable software. All code is open source under the Apache 2.0 license.