Designing Trust Protocols, Society, and Web 3.0 - Helena Rong

Helena Rong, assistant professor at NYU Shanghai, previews her spring 2026 course on trust protocols for the agentic web, introducing 'trust experience design' as a framework with three layers—evidence (cryptographic attestations), primitives (verifiable credentials, zero-knowledge proofs), and rituals/experience (signals that make trust felt). She traces trust's evolution from value-based/social forms (handshakes, institutions) to proof-based/technical forms (blockchains, smart contracts), and discusses decentralized AI agents (DeAgents) like Truth Terminal and Sporef.fun as cases of emerging AI self-sovereignty that outpace existing trust protocols like A2A and ERC-8004. The session concludes with a group exercise where participants design trust protocols for near-future scenarios like autonomous mobility, smart grids, and robotic surgery.

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