Agentic Settlement Protocol Adds Escrow and Three Deadlines Because x402's Atomic Payment Fails Real Commerce

arXiv 2609.02208·medium signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

HTTP-native payment protocols such as x402 let an agent sign a stablecoin authorization and get a resource in the same round trip, which is atomic and final — fine for metered API access, wrong for a purchase made on a person's behalf, since appointments, physical orders and flights are large, frequently cancelled, and should not become the seller's money before delivery. ASP is an application profile over on-chain authorize-and-capture escrow (per the Commerce Payments Protocol) for sellers whose fulfilment is confirmed off-chain by their own order, scheduling, invoicing or booking system. It contributes a three-deadline hold model separating issuance deadline, escrow expiry and inventory expiry by an explicit submission-inclusion-finality margin so no inventory is issued against reclaimable funds, a fulfilment-verification ladder naming who may trigger capture and what their attestation proves, and engine-authoritative partial refunds with per-seller exposure controls.