By: Monique Morrow

Introduction

It should be no surprise that Hedera is positioned for leadership in AI, especially agentic AI as one of the co-founders of Hedera, Dr. Leemon Baird, received his PhD in 1999 from Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Baird’s PhD in Computer Science is entitled, “Reinforcement Learning Through Gradient Descent.”

Fast forward to 2025, as systems evolve into autonomous, decision-making agents, the infrastructure surrounding them must guarantee trust, transparency, and verifiable accountability. Hedera is uniquely positioned to power this evolution.

As AI matures from analytical tools to autonomous agents, the need for trust, transparency, and tamper-proof accountability becomes paramount. Hedera, through its layered and robust infrastructure, provides a comprehensive stack to enable and govern agentic AI with real-world utility.

In this blog, we explore the four-layered Hedera Stack that underpins agentic AI deployment—from application logic to decentralized consensus.

Application Layer: Real-World AI in Action

Hedera is emerging as a critical trust layer for AI, enabling agents to operate with transparency, security, and compliance across industries. By anchoring AI actions and decisions to a tamper-proof ledger, Hedera ensures that autonomous systems can be trusted—not just to perform, but to be accountable. This is especially valuable in sectors where trust, auditability, and regulation are non-negotiable.

At the Application Layer, AI agents leverage Hedera’s infrastructure to solve, complex, real-world challenges:

• Autonomous compliance & audit bots - Used in government, finance, and healthcare to evaluate policy adherence and automate reporting.

• ESG monitoring & real-time carbon tracking - Agents analyze sensor data and satellite imagery to log carbon emissions and impact.

• Agent-driven supply chain provenance - From raw material sourcing to last-mile delivery, agents log events to ensure full traceability.

• Real-time KYC/AML financial agents - AI-powered bots perform continuous screening, record justifications, and help financial institutions comply with regulation.

Agentic AI Enablement Layer: The Builder’s Toolkit

Beneath the application layer lies the Enablement Layer, where developers and organizations have tools to build AI systems that are not only intelligent—but also verifiable and secure. This layer ensures that the behavior of AI agents can be tracked, governed, and audited from inception to execution; laying the foundation of trustworthy AI.

Key components of this layer include:

• AI Studio - An open source modular toolkit that supports low-code/no-code flows for building testing, and deploying intelligent agents on Hedera.

• ProveAI - A cryptographic engine that logs agent actions to Hedera’s ledger, ensuring tamper-proof audit trails.

• Verifiable Compute (EQTY Lab) - Leverages hardware-rooted attestations to prove agents executed securely and as intended, with integration into the Hedera Consensus Service.

• Hedera Smart contract governance & agent registries - Tools that help define and enforce behaviors, permissions, and the lifecycles of AI agents

Trust Infrastructure & Middleware Layer: Identity and Policy

At the foundation of the stack is the Trust Infrastructure, which secures the core elements of identity, data access, and policy enforcement. This layer ensures that both AI agents and their interactions with external systems are governed by verifiable credentials, enforceable regulations, and trusted data inputs. It’s essential for enabling secure collaboration across decentralized, multi-party environments.

Core components include:

• Verifiable credentials / decentralized identity (DID) - Agents and users are bound to cryptographically verified identities.

• Oracles & structured data feeds - Allow real-time ingestion of trusted, external data from IoT, APIs, and institutional systems.

• Smart contract orchestration & token-based access control - Governance logic and policies define how agents interact with sensitive data or systems.

Hedera Network & Hashgraph Consensus Layer: The Trust Engine

At the base of the AI stack is Hedera’s decentralized infrastructure—the foundation that makes verifiable, secure and scalable AI possible. This layer underpins every interaction, decision, and transaction made by intelligent agents, providing the trust performance required for real-time, global deployment.

Key infrastructure components include:

• Hashgraph: ABFT ledger with sub-second finality - Faster and fairer than traditional blockchains, it supports real-time agentic decisions.

• Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) - Logs each step of agent actions in order—making time-stamped trails available for audit.

• Hedera Token Service (HTS) - Enables micro-payments and token-based economies for agents, supporting everything from energy credits to on-demand services.

The Agentic AI Business Stack and core function powered by Hedera are summarized in the following diagram:

Conclusion: Hedera is the Backbone for Agentic AI

The Hedera Agentic AI Business Stack isn’t just a technology model—it’s a blueprint for verifiable AI ecosystems.

By combining a scalable consensus engine, rigorous trust infrastructure, powerful agent tooling, and real-world application focus, Hedera enables the next generation of autonomous agents that can prove their integrity.

From regulators to technologists, the Hedera Agentic AI Business Stack provides what the AI future needs: accountability by design.

Discover Hedera and Agentic AI (including its partners) for more information at:

Hedera: Leading the Charge in Agentic AI