Glossary

KYA — Know Your Agent

An industry category, not our brand. KYA covers the ways of knowing who is accountable for the endpoint an agent is about to pay. ZadQ covers the seller side: it verifies the operator behind a selling endpoint, not the agents that buy.

x402

An open standard that reactivates the HTTP "402 Payment Required" status code so machines can pay each other. Used descriptively throughout this site; no affiliation implied.

Attestation

A digitally signed statement from an authorised issuer that ties a selling endpoint to a legally accountable operator and its guarantee deposit. It travels in the 402 response.

Issuer

A registered organisation authorised to verify operators and sign attestations. Issuers are registered on the MintID identity network themselves, and their standing is one of the things that can invalidate an attestation.

Verdict

The result of checking an attestation: verified, not verified or unknown. It is advice by design. Acting on it is always the checking party's decision.

Assurance grade

The published level named in a verdict. It ties how deeply the issuer vetted the operator to how large the operator's guarantee deposit must be.

Guarantee deposit

Money the operator deposits in escrow, sized to its assurance grade, available for claims and dispute escalation; the MintID identity network calls it the bond, and it can be forfeited. It is how a buyer can be made whole in a payment flow that cannot be reversed.

Seller and vendor

Seller is the x402 role: the operator of the endpoint that gets paid. Vendor is that same seller once attested — our customer. Seller says what it does on x402; vendor says what it is to ZadQ. Both are the accountable operator behind the endpoint, never the buyer's agent.

Trust perimeter

The set of vendors and agents whose accountability is verified. Inside it every payment has an accountable human or organisation at both ends, and nobody reveals who. An attested vendor’s endpoints are inside; an attested agent’s payments are inside once agent attestation opens. Reading who is inside is free to everyone, always.

Agent and agent operator

The agent is the software that pays. The agent operator is the accountable person or organisation behind it. With v1 the operator is verified once and mints its agents’ credentials; an agent never reveals who that is. It presents proof that an accountable party stands behind it.

Settlement

One completed x402 payment received at a payTo address, on the public record of the rail. The usage component of a vendor’s fee is metered per settlement, as daily aggregates per address; counterparties are never stored.

Entry fee, annual minimum, usage fee

What an attested party pays: an entry fee on entering the trust perimeter, an annual minimum per tier, and a usage fee for the payments its attestation covered, credited against the minimum and billed only above it. Reading the verdict is never charged.

Evidence pack

What the Regulated / Compliance tier adds for obliged entities: issuer statements, evidence of the re-verification schedule and the named accountable operator, assembled so a customer can show its regulator a chain of checkable things rather than a vault of documents.

Status root

The periodic, signed summary of every credential’s standing that the MintID identity network publishes. A verifier reads a credential’s standing from the latest root; a suspension or revocation takes effect from the next root, never instantly.

MintID identity network

The identity network ZadQ is built on. Issuers are admitted there, post a guarantee deposit and publish status on published terms that anyone can verify. ZadQ is operated by the CONECTIA group, the network's first implementer, on the same terms as any other issuer.

Fail-closed

The status default. When renewal stops, validity ends: a lapsed attestation reads not verified without anyone having to notice first.

Graceful degradation

The integration promise: when no verdict is available, the badge shows "unknown" and every flow continues under the integrator's own policy.

API key / short-lived session credential

The two credential forms ZadQ services use for authenticated operator calls. This site uses exactly these terms, by policy.