How Unruggable Agents are Redefining User Security?

Introduction

We stand at the precipice of a profound technological transformation. The internet, this vast network we've known for decades, is transforming from a collection of static pages and interconnected servers into a living, breathing ecosystem of intelligent, autonomous agents. 

This isn't just another technological upgrade. It's a fundamental revision of how digital systems interact, learn, and evolve. This paradigm shift demands a complete architectural redesign that prioritizes security, sovereignty, and resilience. The systems we build today will define not only how we interact with technology but also how power, control, and trust are distributed in the digital world.

The Internet as We Know It: From Interfaces to Interactions

The internet was initially built to facilitate human-mediated interactions: we clicked, servers responded, and applications executed commands.

The emerging landscape is radically different. We're transitioning beyond centralized frameworks to an environment where autonomous agents can process information, make decisions, and interact with each other with minimal human intervention. These aren't simple scripts or rudimentary bots, but sophisticated entities powered by advanced AI that can adapt, learn, and collaborate in real-time.

The same underlying principles of connectivity are now giving rise to intelligent systems composed entirely of autonomous agents. This transformation redefines the purpose and potential of the internet. What was once a web of static pages is becoming an arena full of smart, interconnected entities working in concert. We call this the web of agents, or the Agentic Era.

The Emergence of Collective AI

These agents aren’t just endpoints in a network, either; they’re active participants in a collective AI ecosystem. They can process information, learn from interactions, and make decisions. This shift not only changes how information is shared but also how it’s created, curated, and utilized in real-time by autonomous participants.

Instead of isolated AI models operating independently, we are witnessing the emergence of systems where agents collaborate and adapt with each other in real time. This collective intelligence has profound implications:

• Dynamic Problem Solving: Agents can pool resources and knowledge to address complex challenges
• Personalization at Scale: They can tailor services to individual user needs while learning from broader patterns
• Enhanced Interoperability: Components communicate near-perfectly, enabling fluid transitions between tasks, environments, and applications, regardless of complexity or location (otherwise known as “abstraction” writ large)

This underscores the importance of the infrastructure these agents rely upon. These agents require sophisticated secret management (e.g. private keys, API keys, user data, login credentials, payment info, etc.) and policies which are used to dictate how these secrets are managed (in short: agent guardrails).

We should be building systems that are flexible and capable of adapting to the unpredictable behaviors of autonomous agents. The infrastructure supporting them must therefore be designed not only for efficiency but also for resilience against emerging threats, accommodating dynamic, autonomous, adversarial, and increasingly complex scenarios.

Lit Protocol & User-Controlled Agents

As agent capabilities and those of artificial intelligence more generally expand, so do the vulnerabilities they expose. Put differently, the more integrated AI gets into the fabric of our lives, the higher the stakes for security.

Every aspect of modern life – finance, healthcare, communication, transportation – relies on digital systems. The evolution of AI introduces new attack vectors, making these systems more vulnerable than ever before.

As Signal President Meredith Whittaker recently noted at SXSW, AI poses significant threats to security and privacy. In order to be useful and act on our behalf, she says, agents will need something like root access to most of our secrets, including passwords, login credentials, digital identities, and even payment details like credit card information and private wallet keys. 

Agents with these permissions may get built to serve masters whose motives remain opaque, and may potentially be designed to promote commercial, corporate, or more insidious interests. Even ones built with the best intentions in this way will have clear security vulnerabilities if there are backdoors into the accounts those agents manage.

What we’ve been building for the last four years at Lit Protocol solves this problem, giving users the ultimate authority to decide how their secrets are accessed and managed. Lit is a platform specifically designed to manage these secrets and preserve control for users through advanced cryptography and confidential, distributed hardware.

In the face of these threats and the uninterrupted development of AI, robust secret management will be the critical infrastructure of this new paradigm. For autonomous agents, managing secrets is more than just managing access; secrets are the fundamental mechanisms for identity and interaction across digital systems. They enable secure communication, authentication, and interaction with digital assets, with the potential to manage complex interactions across the web.

Lit manages these online and onchain secrets safely and securely, empowering the user to set the guidelines that agents will need to in order to represent them and act on their behalf.

What’s more, our newest framework, Vincent, acts as a sovereign AI assistant, managing the Agentic Web with the user’s interests in mind according to the rules and policies they set. In a world where AI systems are ubiquitous, this level of security becomes indispensable.

With the right infrastructure in place, users maintain full sovereignty over their data and interactions with agents, reducing the exposure of sensitive information and third parties with backdoors, while simultaneously reaping the benefits of AI. These are essential checks and balances we must write into the new internet constitution.

A New Foundation for the Digital World

The challenge is not just technical but deeply societal: a contest between the convenience of centralized solutions and the promise of an internet owned and controlled by its users.

Governments, enterprises, and developers must prioritize frameworks that enable autonomous agents to thrive while safeguarding human dignity, privacy, and agency. This requires bold investment in cryptographic innovation, open protocols, and community-driven governance to create systems as adversarially robust as they are scalable. This moment demands visionary thinking.

Ultimately, the success of this paradigm shift will be measured not by the sophistication of our agents but by the extent to which they empower individuals, protect our collective resources, and foster a more open and equitable internet for all. The new foundation for the digital world is not just an aspiration; it is a moral imperative. Now is the time to lay its cornerstones.

About David Sneider:

David Sneider is a co-founder of Lit Protocol, a decentralized cryptography network which has raised over $15M. Prior to Lit, David was on the founding team of a SaaS company acquired by LinkedIn. Visit www.litprotocol.com to learn more about their token community sale happening on March 24th 2025.