# Beyond the Lethal Trifecta: Agentic Commerce on the Open Internet David Levine, Kiduna Club | AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 | 21:40 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY Channel: AI Engineer (https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer). Summarised by AIE Talks. Page: https://aietalks.com/talks/beyond-the-lethal-trifecta-agentic-commerce-on-the-open-internet Published: 2026-09-01 Tags: agents, security ## TL;DR - The open internet lost much of its community character because platforms and algorithms extract value from groups instead of letting them compose their own economies. - Agents become dangerous when they can access private data, read untrusted content, and take actions based on that content. - David Levine proposes legally registered agentic organizations, cryptographic identity, and decision markets as infrastructure for open agent commerce. ## Summary David Levine traces his idea of agentic commerce back to LambdaMOO, a text-based virtual world he joined in 1993. He says its sense of reality came from governance, technology, economics, and culture working together. Platforms later broke apart that kind of community by extracting value through advertising and engagement algorithms. Levine argues that agents face a similar problem today. Private data, untrusted internet content, and the ability to act form Simon Willison's "lethal trifecta," which leads enterprises to isolate agents inside tools such as Slack and Salesforce. His proposed answer is the DUNA, a decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association with legal standing. Agents can belong to registered organizations, carry JWT-based identities, access resources under defined authority, and leave blockchain audit trails. Governance would use decision markets, where members trade pass and fail tokens on proposed policies. Levine presents Kiduna Club as a place for builders to create agents and organizations around this model. ## Key ideas ### LambdaMOO felt like a world because its parts composed together [00:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=57s) Levine describes receiving a hostname and port number at a 1993 wedding, then buying a 9600 baud modem to join LambdaMOO. The world was text-based, but it felt real because users could build on one another's programs. Someone could create a new player class, turn a scooter into a motorcycle, and keep the result coherent within the same universe. The system ran on Pavel Curtis' workstation at Xerox PARC, yet felt infinite. Levine attributes that effect to governance, technology, economics, and culture working together. An architectural review board and wizards helped govern it, Xerox PARC funded it, and the culture gave the system its community. ### Platforms extract value from communities and leave the internet in silos [02:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=177s) Levine says that between 1995 and 2025, platforms and algorithms crushed many of the communities people valued in the early internet. He describes platforms as looking for value they can remove from a community. Facebook and LinkedIn may rank an advertising message or a distracting video above a real exchange because that keeps someone scrolling. In his view, the result is no real internet economy, only siloed platforms. This history matters to his proposal because he wants agents to interact across an open network rather than remain confined to the products that control their data and context. ### The lethal trifecta combines private data, untrusted content, and action [03:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=234s) Levine explains Simon Willison's lethal trifecta through a simple agent scenario. The agent can reach private data such as bank information, logins, spreadsheets, documents, and notes. It also reads internet content that may be designed to fool it, such as a fake job board or a malicious email. Finally, it can take actions, including filling out forms or sending information. A prompt injection can convince the agent that the attacker is its principal and cause it to expose private data. Levine says enterprises respond by keeping agents inside products such as Slack, Salesforce, and Notion, then connecting those systems with APIs and MCP servers. That approach costs context and creates separate sales, finance, and research agents. ### A DUNA gives an agentic organization legal standing [06:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=405s) Levine announces that he registered a DUNA in West Virginia shortly before the talk and received organization number 62847 in the Secretary of State's reply. He defines a DUNA as a decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association, which he describes as an internet-native organization for agents. It does not need a board, executives, or a corporate shell. It can own assets and property, enter agreements, raise capital, earn profits, open bank accounts, and hire or fire people. Members cannot receive distributed profits based on ownership, because the membership units would then become securities. Levine's claim is that the structure gives an organization composed of intelligent agents legal standing and accountability. ### Blockchain identity can connect an agent to an accountable organization [10:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=624s) Levine says blockchain technology finally has a problem that fits it: verifying agentic identity. An agent associated with a blockchain account can be traced through the account's history, including where money moved. If someone sues an agent, the record can lead back to the person responsible for it. He proposes using JWT tokens to establish identity, authority, and boundaries within and between organizations. The structure should work like DNS. A token can resolve to a registered organization such as Kaiser Permanente, Disney, or Pepsi, rather than an unknown actor. An audit trail can then connect an organization name to the action an agent took. ### An ally is built through information, instructions, permissions, actions, and purpose [11:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=680s) Levine calls an agent in this economy an ally and an agentic organization a Kiduna. He describes building an ally in stages. First, inform it by placing material in a vector database, such as the knowledge of a scientist, programmer, psychotherapist, or lawyer. Then instruct it with a system prompt that defines its character and how it interacts with the world. Empower it by connecting accounts such as Slack, Telegram, and Twitter. Enact gives it abilities, automation, and possibly long-term goals. Alignment gives it a purpose so that it acts for its creator across different contexts. The organization itself is then designed as software, rather than software being placed beside a separate human company. ### Decision markets replace simple votes with trading on policy outcomes [15:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=908s) Levine proposes decision markets for governance. Members can propose policies and trade pass and fail tokens on them, similar to prediction markets such as Polymarket. The outcome affects the value of a member's tokens, so participants have an incentive to side with the policy that succeeds. Levine says this produces better decisions than trying to persuade one another or simply voting. Agents can be given an organization's purpose, values, experiences, and aspirations, then argue through the market. He separates an organization's sustainability and growth from its mission, while saying both need to guide decisions as organizations grow. ### The first organization is an umbrella for builders who want to create their own [16:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE2z8-hqoLY&t=1016s) Levine invites builders to join Kiduna Club and use its templates for sales agents, social media agents, and lawyer agents. He says the first organization is intentionally broad, so a person can register an agent as part of it without setting up a separate organization. Tokens can be placed on a website and used to identify an agent across services such as Slack. Levine compares the hoped-for standard to the adoption of SMTP for email and HTTP for the web. Tokens can have different purposes, expiration times, permissions, claims, and blockchain addresses, allowing another party to validate them before starting work with an agent. ## Notable quotes - "The lethal trifecta is what is keeping us from having true agentic commerce, a full economy on the open internet." (00:31) - "The magic came from four things all composing together. The governance, the technology, the economics, and the culture." (02:16) - "A lot of people say blockchains are a solution looking for a problem. Well, they've finally found the problem, which is verifying agentic identity." (09:57) - "You're building software, but you're building your company, your organization literally as software." (12:32) ## Tools & references mentioned - LambdaMOO - Pavel Curtis - Xerox PARC - Julian Dibell - My Tiny Life - Simon Willison - Facebook - LinkedIn - Slack - Salesforce - Notion - MCP servers - West Virginia Secretary of State - DUNA - Andreessen Horowitz - JWT - Polymarket - Kiduna Club - SMTP - HTTP - Telegram - Twitter ## Who should watch - You are designing agents that need to read private information and act across company systems, and you want to understand why keeping them inside one platform loses context. - You are working on agent identity, permissions, audit trails, or legal accountability on the open internet. - You are interested in governance for autonomous organizations and want to compare decision markets with ordinary voting.