It seems that cloudflare is trying to create an internet-wide agent identity platform in general. I have seem few attempts at “agent identity” but they were all intrinsically limited to a particular system. An identity AWS IAM assigns to an agent isn’t gonna work on rottentomatos.com or techcrunch.com.
This was always a vaguely desired thing, but the implementation details was always a form of OIDC federation which is mind-numbingly complex and not worth the hassle. Just shove an api key or a shared secret of some sort and move on. Only accounts that are very high value targets for attacks (cloud infra accounts, CIs infra, billing, and things they interact with implement OIDC federation. But that awesome Thai recipe blog has no chance of implementing something like that.
With Agents driving internet traffic, there is a desire to have identities for them. And since it’s inherently easy for them to leak these identities (look at the million sandbox solutions that all share the same dumb goal of “protect the API Key or password”), having short lived tokens for everything (AWS IAM or Azure Managed Identity like) simplifies the entire process. Agreeing on the single IdP was the problem, there are like 40 (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, even GitHub, and Amazon have SSO not to mention all the regional specific ones)
There is a legitimate need for that, and it looks like cloudflare figured if they are that “internet agent identity provider”, then there is a lot of power and control over the internet and AI use in general.
"This company keeps creating products in the space that they operate in, where there is clear demand, and that people want to use. What's their angle?"
Cloudflare is certainly making a full court press to provide infra for the agentic web. My own ability to see whats coming also believes we need wallets, agent protocols, cloud services for agents, etc. So, maybe this is the way.
At the same time, something tells me what is coming isn't going to be as recognizable as these products build for.
What are some examples of what you see coming that requires agent wallets or agent protocols (I’m not 100% sure what that means tbh) or agent cloud services (what makes these different from regular cloud services?)
The only thing I see that’s unique for “agents” when it comes to cloud services is finally paying attention to provisioning speed and developer iterations.
Last year, for the first time in my career, I heard c-suite exec concerned about projects with multi-hour long CI or deployments that take hours because “agents can’t be successful” as they need to iterate way more.
What a stupid move! So, you have a Workers subdomain, a Zero Trust subdomain, and now a Wallet subdomain - one company with random handles! Cloudflare does not get identity!
For example, Meta does. When they started offering reserved usernames on Facebook, they gave advance notice and gave everybody an equal start. With WhatsApp usernames, they also allowed you to pick your Instagram username or your Facebook username. That's how it should be done. What Cloudflare did is basically push me not to use their offering, because I couldn't get my username. I'm not going to rebrand just for them! I'm sure most were reserved by crooks, not real customers, to blackmail the legit parties!
Cloudflare's in a good position to be an agent infra provider. Durable objects and serverless/workers are great agent primitives.
It makes sense that they're leaning into an all-in-one platform play, i.e. if you use DOs, you might as well use our wallet/sandbox/AI gateway/etc. too.
- permission-ed system when we’ve got lightning and super low cost blockchains. They could even run their own L2.
- I am typing my name in a cafe and hear some clacking sounds. I was puzzled there for a full minute to where the sound was coming from. Who thought this is a good idea?
- So I finish the reservation and there is actually no product yet?
It seems that cloudflare is trying to create an internet-wide agent identity platform in general. I have seem few attempts at “agent identity” but they were all intrinsically limited to a particular system. An identity AWS IAM assigns to an agent isn’t gonna work on rottentomatos.com or techcrunch.com.
This was always a vaguely desired thing, but the implementation details was always a form of OIDC federation which is mind-numbingly complex and not worth the hassle. Just shove an api key or a shared secret of some sort and move on. Only accounts that are very high value targets for attacks (cloud infra accounts, CIs infra, billing, and things they interact with implement OIDC federation. But that awesome Thai recipe blog has no chance of implementing something like that.
With Agents driving internet traffic, there is a desire to have identities for them. And since it’s inherently easy for them to leak these identities (look at the million sandbox solutions that all share the same dumb goal of “protect the API Key or password”), having short lived tokens for everything (AWS IAM or Azure Managed Identity like) simplifies the entire process. Agreeing on the single IdP was the problem, there are like 40 (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, even GitHub, and Amazon have SSO not to mention all the regional specific ones)
There is a legitimate need for that, and it looks like cloudflare figured if they are that “internet agent identity provider”, then there is a lot of power and control over the internet and AI use in general.
Someone has already reserved my very unique company name and a bunch of variants.
Without domain validation, what is this user's intention other than fraud/impersonation?
I've already got an active impersonator running a website under my brand name and confusing my customers.
nothing
It feels like Cloudflare keeps inserting itself in between everything, everywhere it can. So convenient you'll middleman yourself. I do not like this.
"This company keeps creating products in the space that they operate in, where there is clear demand, and that people want to use. What's their angle?"
Cloudflare is certainly making a full court press to provide infra for the agentic web. My own ability to see whats coming also believes we need wallets, agent protocols, cloud services for agents, etc. So, maybe this is the way.
At the same time, something tells me what is coming isn't going to be as recognizable as these products build for.
What are some examples of what you see coming that requires agent wallets or agent protocols (I’m not 100% sure what that means tbh) or agent cloud services (what makes these different from regular cloud services?)
The only thing I see that’s unique for “agents” when it comes to cloud services is finally paying attention to provisioning speed and developer iterations.
Last year, for the first time in my career, I heard c-suite exec concerned about projects with multi-hour long CI or deployments that take hours because “agents can’t be successful” as they need to iterate way more.
Their bets are naturally hedged because a lot of their infra is just nice AWS-lite.
What a stupid move! So, you have a Workers subdomain, a Zero Trust subdomain, and now a Wallet subdomain - one company with random handles! Cloudflare does not get identity!
For example, Meta does. When they started offering reserved usernames on Facebook, they gave advance notice and gave everybody an equal start. With WhatsApp usernames, they also allowed you to pick your Instagram username or your Facebook username. That's how it should be done. What Cloudflare did is basically push me not to use their offering, because I couldn't get my username. I'm not going to rebrand just for them! I'm sure most were reserved by crooks, not real customers, to blackmail the legit parties!
So this wallet thing is an identity, so when I have to use it on various sites then they effectively don't need cookies anymore to track me?
I didn’t think .pay TLD are available yet.
How is https://cloudflare.pay resolving?
Many people set their DNS to 1.1.1.1 -- would be easy for cloudflare to resolve any TLD it feels like
Read most of the article, still not sure why we need this. Is this a stablecoin bank for agents?
If so, why not interact with an exchange?
Also, not sure how many merchants out there accept stablecoins. Probably not many.
This is interesting but how do site operators cash out? Is is non-custodial only like binance?
Cloudflare's in a good position to be an agent infra provider. Durable objects and serverless/workers are great agent primitives.
It makes sense that they're leaning into an all-in-one platform play, i.e. if you use DOs, you might as well use our wallet/sandbox/AI gateway/etc. too.
Agentic commerce is such an interesting space!
Alipay and Coinbase already have similar offerings in market.
Related:
Web Security is Too Hard
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49172834
What a bunch of garbage
- permission-ed system when we’ve got lightning and super low cost blockchains. They could even run their own L2.
- I am typing my name in a cafe and hear some clacking sounds. I was puzzled there for a full minute to where the sound was coming from. Who thought this is a good idea?
- So I finish the reservation and there is actually no product yet?
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