Glossary

Bounded agent

An agent minted for a person, within a scope, a limit and an expiry. It presents a human-backed agent credential; the service it presents to learns the conditions it asked for and a pseudonym for itself, never who the person is.

Human-backed agent credential

What a bounded agent presents: proof, valid for ten seconds and bound to the service that asked, that an identity-verified person answers for it within the limits that person set.

Accountable principal

The identity-verified person who answers for a bounded agent. On a ZadQ account, the responsible person.

Plan

What the accountable person pays ZadQ for: one identity verification, renewed by its grade, and a number of bounded agents alive at a time — 1 on Personal, up to 5 on Premium.

Enterprise

The contract for more than 5 agents, or for agents you run for others: agreed with ZadQ and set up by ZadQ; no self-serve price.

Relying party

A business whose service decides whether to accept an agent. It checks each presentation itself, under its own policy; this site calls it your service.

Verifier of record

A business whose service accepts or refuses agents under its own registered origin and request key. The decision is always the business's.

Managed deployment

The variant in which ZadQ operates a business's verifier under the business's registered origin. The business keeps its operator account, can rotate its key at any time, and owns its decision log. Being prepared.

Claim window

How long a verifier keeps what a claim about an agent it accepted would need. Every agent presentation carries an encrypted reference to the agent that only its issuer and the network's Foundation together can open, and only for a recorded claim; the verifier keeps it, unreadable, for the claim window, so a claim reaches an agent that no longer answers, and deletes it when the window closes unless a claim on it is open. Specified, and not yet running; the network's dispute process is specified, not built.

Domain-control evidence

A small public file a business publishes at its exact origin, in the network's published format. It names the origin, the business's request key and the account that registers its verifier, and carries no private key and no personal data. It shows that whoever registers the verifier controls the origin.

Verifier admission

How a business's service becomes a verifier of record on the production network: ZadQ files the request under the network's published admission policy, and the network's operator decides. The fee is the network's.

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, backed by the issuer's guarantee deposit on the network. 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 what the attestation claims and to its re-verification cadence. Grades measure how strong the identification was; how recently it was checked is the freshness band, a separate thing.

Grade A3

A stronger identity check that some services ask for. Included in every plan when a service requires it.

Freshness band

How recently the identification evidence was checked, as a band (F4 under 30 days, F3 under 90, F2 under 180, F1 under 365), never a date. The issuer computes it and publishes it beside the grade; a verifier reads it from the verification session or the attestation. "Human-backed at G" means grade 2 or above and freshness F1 or better, and the issuer enforces it. A presentation of the credential proves the grade threshold only, nothing about recency.

Holder software

Whatever keeps a credential and presents it. The MintID identity network ships a headless holder library that runs in the holder's own infrastructure, next to the keys it already protects; on ZadQ's seller rail it runs inside the seller's own middleware, and ZadQ never holds a key, a credential or a proof. There is no consumer wallet and none is planned; a wallet somebody else builds can present over the same standard transports.

Guarantee deposit

The deposit the issuer holds on the identity network under the network’s published rules, forfeitable, which stands behind every attestation it signs. Vendors place none; ZadQ holds no funds of anyone.

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, and so are the payments an attested agent makes. Reading who is inside is free to everyone. The category, in one line: verifiable accountability for agent payments.

Agent and agent operator

The agent is the software that pays. The agent operator is the accountable person or organisation behind it: verified once, it mints its agents’ credentials, and 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 (vendors)

A one-off fee an x402 vendor pays at activation, for the support and integration work of its onboarding.

Included endpoints and additional endpoints

The endpoints a vendor tier covers (3 or 10); each one beyond them is billed with the subscription.

Usage fee (vendors)

0.75 % of each settlement a vendor receives on an attested endpoint, capped at $0.40 per settlement, credited against the annual minimum and billed only above it.

VAT

Added at checkout for your country; prices are shown before VAT.

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. Being prepared.

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 it accepts; a suspension or revocation enters the next root and holds everywhere within a published bound (185 seconds for an issuer’s change, 245 seconds for a holder’s own revocation), never instantly.

MintID identity network

The identity network ZadQ is built on. Accepted issuers verify people and organisations and issue credentials or sign attestations; the network publishes their status, guarantee deposits and registrations on terms anyone can verify; verifiers decide on their own service. MintID itself issues nothing, certifies nothing and verifies nobody. 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.