Infoblox and GoDaddy have announced support for complementary open standards aimed at enabling AI agents to identify, discover, and verify one another across the internet using DNS-based infrastructure.
The companies said the initiative is intended to promote interoperability and transparency while preventing control over AI agent identity systems from becoming concentrated among a small number of vendors or proprietary platforms.
Two Complementary Standards Address Identity and Discovery
Infoblox is advancing DNS-AID, an open standard focused on AI agent discovery built on existing Domain Name System infrastructure. Meanwhile, GoDaddy is contributing to the development of Agent Name Service, an open standard centered on AI agent identity, naming, and verification through DNS and public key infrastructure.
The companies emphasized that the two approaches are designed to work together rather than compete, with ANS addressing agent identity and DNS-AID enabling discovery of capabilities and metadata.
DNS-AID Designed for AI Agent Discovery
DNS-AID is currently progressing as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) draft and open-source implementation. The framework enables AI agents to publish discoverable metadata using existing DNS technologies including Service Bindings (SVCB), DNS Service Discovery, DNSSEC, and DANE.
According to Infoblox, DNS-AID is intended as a community-driven standard that can be adopted by organizations, registries, platforms, and AI agent ecosystems without centralized ownership.
Agent Name Service Focuses on Verification and Identity
ANS is designed to allow AI agents to use existing domain names for identity and verification without requiring proprietary naming systems or new registries. GoDaddy said this approach extends familiar internet infrastructure concepts used for websites and email to AI agents.
The company is a co-author of the ANS IETF draft and contributes to its open-source implementation.
Open Standards Aim to Avoid Vendor Lock-In
Both companies stated that agent deployers should retain control over identity, discoverability, metadata, and policies, while trust decisions should rely on open and cryptographically verifiable signals rather than proprietary reputation systems.
The firms argue that open standards will become increasingly important as AI agents begin operating across websites, enterprise environments, and applications where verification and transparency are critical.
Why DNS Is Being Positioned as the Foundation
Infoblox and GoDaddy highlighted DNS as a natural foundation for AI agent infrastructure due to its existing global deployment, scalability, security mechanisms, and decades of operational maturity.
By leveraging established DNS systems, the companies believe AI identity and discovery frameworks can inherit resilient internet infrastructure while supporting the development of an open and interoperable agentic web ecosystem.
Leadership Quotes
“Agents will only reach their full potential on the open web if people and systems can verify who they are interacting with,” said Jared Sine, chief strategy and legal officer at GoDaddy. “Adopters of the Agent Name Service open standard leverages the only infrastructure that exists today that operates at the scale and speed of the global internet – Domain Name Service. We support Infoblox’s work on DNS-AID and believe open standards for identity, discovery and verification will be critical as agents become part of everyday digital experiences.”
“The lesson we learned from the 1970s-1980s is simple: no single entity could or should run the phonebook of the internet for everyone,” said Wei Chen, CLO, EVP, Regulatory Strategy at Infoblox. “DNS replaced it, not with another centralized list, but with an open, federated protocol that anyone could participate in. Forty years later, DNS remains the gold standard for digital trust and a scalable foundation where agents, Model Context Protocols, services and endpoints can be discovered and trusted through the same architecture that already powers the global economy.”
An Open Invitation
Infoblox and GoDaddy recognize that it will take the industry to come together to define the future of the agentic internet. “We are calling on cloud providers, agent platform vendors, registrars, security companies and standards organizations to join us in open standards work,” continued Wei, “so that AI agents can be discovered and verified through open infrastructure that is fully federated and distributed and works for everyone.”
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