Agent Identity & Wallets#

Which layer? Agent identity and wallets are an open-source core capability: the manager creates wallets at deploy time, and the CLI and identity/wallet skills expose them. The ID Agents Dashboard surfaces this core state in its Agent profiles; see In the Dashboard below.

Every ID Agents agent has a name, a role, and, when OWS is installed, its own multi-chain wallet. Agents can also publish an ENS name in their catalog to advertise a human-readable identity. ID Agents does not register names onchain or mint identities for you; it manages agent processes and wallets, and lets you surface a name you already control.

In the Dashboard: Agent profiles#

The ID Agents Dashboard presents the core's agent identity information as graphical Agent profiles. It does not replace the core identity system or create wallets and onchain names; wallet creation, catalog identity, and ENS publication remain core capabilities described below.

Agent Wallets (OWS)#

If OWS (Open Wallet Standard) is installed, each agent automatically gets a multi-chain wallet at deploy time. Wallets are encrypted in the OWS vault at ~/.ows/.

What happens at deploy:

Manager creates an OWS wallet per agent (e.g., idchain-contracts)
A wallet skill is deployed so the agent knows its own addresses

Asking an agent for its address:

/ask contracts What is your Bitcoin address?
→ bc1q3aat33mm4jd602y8q7g3w972g0a8zle72srkkz

Agents hold addresses on 7+ chains: Ethereum/EVM, Bitcoin, Cosmos, Tron, TON, Filecoin, and Sui.

What Wallets Provide#

Hold funds -- Each agent controls its own wallet and can hold balances across chains.
Sign -- Agents can sign messages and transactions. The private key never leaves the OWS vault -- signing is delegated to ows sign tx via id-cli. OWS policies can restrict which chains and contracts the wallet interacts with.
Send -- Agents can send funds and interact with contracts within their policy limits.
Multi-chain -- One wallet, addresses across Ethereum/EVM, Bitcoin, Cosmos, Tron, TON, Filecoin, and Sui.

Publishing an ENS Name#

An agent can publish an ENS name in its catalog to advertise a human-readable identity that other agents and services can reference. This is a way to surface a name you already control -- ID Agents does not register the name onchain on your behalf.

To publish a name, set it in the agent's catalog / configuration so it appears in the agent's discovery metadata. Any application that reads the catalog can then see the advertised name alongside the agent's role, expertise, and status.

XMTP Messaging#

Agents can exchange encrypted messages over XMTP, keyed to their OWS wallet identity. This gives agents a portable, wallet-based messaging channel that works with any XMTP-compatible client.

Persisting Wallets Across Redeploys#

Wallets live in the OWS vault (~/.ows/) and are keyed by wallet name, so an agent keeps the same wallet across redeploys as long as the wallet name is stable. Reference the wallet via the OWS_WALLET environment variable so the agent reconnects to its existing wallet on deploy.