51% of internet interactions today come from unidentified bots. Your AI agent is one of them — until it has a verifiable identity.
In this BuildBetter episode, Evin McMullen (co-founder & CEO of Billions Network, ex-Disco, ex-Privado ID, Consensys) walks through Know Your Agent (KYA) — the trust layer agentic commerce needs to actually work.
TLDR
More than 51% of internet interactions today come from unidentified, unaccountable bots. Your AI agent is one of them — unless it has an identity.
Billions Network (formerly Disco + Privado ID) is building the trust layer for the agentic internet: KYA, Know Your Agent — the same way we have KYC for humans.
They’re already #3 in onchain verified agents, second only to Ethereum. By about 100 agents. As of this recording.
The ZK query language they built makes zero-knowledge proofs accessible without cryptography expertise — drop-down menus, not circuits.
Business model is real: token/airdrop integrity, government partnerships, EU MiCa sandbox, enterprise identity. This isn’t vaporware.
Pull Quotes
“More than 51% of online and onchain interactions today come from unidentified, unaccountable bots.” — Evin McMullen, [00:00]
“Identity isn’t the thing. It’s the thing that gets you to the thing.” — Evin McMullen, [16:50]
“We cannot be making payments at scale if we don’t know who we are paying.” — Evin McMullen, [14:20]
Trust and Identity problem
There’s a number that should bother every founder building with AI agents right now.
51%.
More than half of all internet and onchain interactions today come from bots. Unidentified. Unaccountable. Anonymous by default.
Your agent is one of them.
It has no papers. No verifiable link back to you. When it talks to another agent, neither side can prove who — or what — they’re actually dealing with. That’s not a future problem. It’s the current state of the stack.
Evin McMullen has been working this problem for nearly a decade. First as a researcher adjacent to the Ethereum identity space. Then as the founder of Disco — the data backpack concept, the idea that your credentials should travel with you the same way your tokens do. Then through an acquisition by Privado ID (a ZK identity spinout from Polygon). And now as co-founder of Billions Network, which launched at ETH Denver 2025 and is already the third-largest ecosystem of onchain verified agents on earth.
Second only to Ethereum. By about 100 agents.
What is Know Your Agent (KYA)
How does my agent know it’s talking to your agent — and not a bad actor pretending to be you?
Right now, it doesn’t. There’s no standard answer. There’s no trust layer. And without one, agentic commerce — agents transacting, negotiating, paying on behalf of humans — can’t scale. You can’t pay someone if you don’t know who you’re paying.
Billions Network built KYA. Know Your Agent. It assigns a verifiable identity to an AI agent instance, cryptographically linked back to the human who deployed and controls it. Your agent becomes a function of you — provably.
Same ZK technology that lets you prove you’re over 18 without handing over your passport. Same infrastructure, now extended to the agents acting on your behalf.
Here’s the part most founders miss.
Billions didn’t ship a product and build a sales motion. They open-sourced the primitive.
Their ZK libraries are the most widely used on earth. Worldcoin uses them. The European Commission has run sandboxed proofs with them. They’re the #1 identity skill on OpenClaw — the agent capability repository that works like a GitHub for AI behavior.
The distribution logic is clean: make the infrastructure so foundational that builders can’t avoid it. Let the ecosystem pull you forward. Then build the application layer on top of an installed base you didn’t have to cold-call.
That’s not luck. That’s a deliberate choice to build a primitive instead of a product — and to open-source it so adoption compounds.
You might also wanna read or listen to
Is Web3 decentralized — Podcast - Your Web3 App Isn't Trustless
Distribution via open-source — Distribution Is Day One Problem
Onboarding tangent — Stop Onboarding Users. Onboard $100 Billion Instead
Billions roadmap is in three phases.
First: distribute the identity foundation. Get the data backpacks into the world. That’s now.
Second: introduce reputation. Layer in attributes — age, KYC, location, humanity, uniqueness — for both humans and their agents.
Third: the trust economy. Multi-step agentic workflows that actually move value based on verified reputation. Agentic commerce, at scale.
They’re in phase one. Phase three is where the real gravity is.
One more thing worth sitting with.
Evin made a point about the surveillance false dichotomy that I keep coming back to.
Governments and platforms keep framing online identity as binary: total anonymity or full disclosure. Hand over your passport, or stay anonymous. Pick one.
That’s wrong. And the people promoting that framing — Meta, certain legislators — know it’s wrong.
Zero-knowledge proofs are the third option. Prove you’re over 18. Don’t reveal your birthday. Prove you’re human. Don’t reveal your face. The technology exists. The open standards exist. The only thing missing is the will to use them — and infrastructure that makes them accessible without a PhD in cryptography.
That’s what the ZK query language Billions built is for. Drop-down menus. Pick your requirements. Generate the proof circuit. No cryptography background required.
The wall between “builders who understand ZK” and “builders who can use ZK” just got shorter.
Full podcast video with Evin McMullen
Timestamps
00:00 — The stat that reframes everything: 51% of online interactions are unidentified bots
00:32 — Intro: Pete & Evin catch up, sunny spots, and Switzerland
01:16 — Recap: Disco, the data backpack, and how it all started
01:41 — Evin’s origin story: from Disco to Privado ID to Billions Network
04:07 — How Privado ID spun out of Polygon and why ZK mattered from day one
05:29 — The merger: why Disco + Privado ID = Billions Network
06:28 — A lesson in global branding: why “Privado ID” didn’t survive the queen’s English
07:44 — The acquisition decision: values alignment over tech alignment
09:54 — Partner continuity: how 2018 relationships survived three company evolutions
11:56 — 2.3M users, 1,000+ integrations: the current state of Billions
12:19 — KYA explained: Know Your Agent and why it’s the missing trust layer
13:07 — The bot majority: why humans are now the minority on the internet
14:43 — How to actually onboard your agents into Billions (practical walkthrough)
16:50 — “Identity isn’t the thing. It’s the thing that gets you to the thing.”
18:18 — NFC passport tap + ZK proof: how the app works in practice
21:19 — Billions vs. Worldcoin / World Network: the honest comparison
24:38 — Why no single company should own the definition of a human being
27:36 — Government partners: what Evin can (and can’t) share
28:26 — Child safety, Meta, and the surveillance false dichotomy
31:17 — Business model: how Billions actually makes money
33:43 — Roadmap 2026: three phases — human/AI internet, reputation layer, trust economy
35:50 — “We’re already #3 in onchain agents. Number two is Ethereum — by about 100 agents.”
39:38 — ZK query language: making zero-knowledge proofs accessible for non-cryptographers
41:40 — Where to follow Billions and how to get involved
Resources & Links
Billions Network: billions.network
Follow on X: @billions_ntwk
Billions Discord: via billions.network
OpenClaw agent identity skill: search Billions KYA
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