Comparison
How PEAC Protocol relates to other standards for AI content access, attribution, and provenance.
Key Insight
PEAC is complementary to existing standards, not a replacement. Use robots.txt for crawl control, RSL for AI usage tokens, C2PA for provenance - and PEAC for verifiable proof that policies were honored with cryptographic receipts.
| Feature | PEAC | robots.txt | RSL 1.0 | C2PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Verifiable receipts for policy, payment, attribution | Crawl instructions for search engines | AI usage tokens and permissions | Content provenance and authenticity |
| Cryptographic Verification | Yes (Ed25519 JWS) | No | No | Yes (X.509 certificates) |
| Payment Integration | Yes (HTTP 402, x402, Stripe, Razorpay) | No | No | No |
| Machine-Readable Policy | Yes (/.well-known/peac-policy.yaml) | Limited (allow/disallow) | Yes (robots.txt extended syntax) | Embedded in content |
| Audit Trail | Yes (receipt chains, telemetry) | No | No | Yes (manifest history) |
| Agent Support | Yes (MCP, ACP, TAP) | Limited (User-Agent matching) | Yes (AI bot targeting) | No (human-focused) |
| Real-time Enforcement | Yes (HTTP 402 flow) | No (advisory only) | No (advisory only) | No (verification after the fact) |
| Offline Verification | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes |
| Attribution Tracking | Yes (in receipt claims) | No | Limited | Yes (creator metadata) |
| Standardization | Open specification (v0.9.x) | De facto standard (RFC 9309) | RSL 1.0 (emerging) | Industry coalition |
Agent Protocol Integration
PEAC provides mappings for major agent and commerce protocols:
Model Context Protocol
Budget utilities with bigint minor units
Agentic Commerce Protocol
Agent-to-agent transaction support
Trusted Agent Protocol
Visa RFC 9421 signature verification
Robots Specification Language
Extended ControlPurpose tokens
When to Use What
Use robots.txt for
- -Basic crawl control for search engines
- -Path-based allow/disallow rules
- -Crawl-delay directives
Use RSL for
- -AI training opt-in/opt-out signals
- -AI usage tokens (ai-all, ai-train, ai-input)
- -Extended robots.txt semantics
Use C2PA for
- -Image/video authenticity verification
- -Creator attribution in media files
- -Edit history and provenance chains
Use PEAC for
- +Cryptographic proof of policy compliance
- +Payment flows with verifiable receipts
- +Agent-to-agent commerce and coordination
- +Audit trails for regulatory compliance
Using Them Together
# robots.txt - crawl control
User-agent: *
Allow: /
# RSL tokens - AI usage permissions
User-agent: ai-all
Disallow: /private/
# PEAC policy - verifiable terms
# /.well-known/peac-policy.yaml
version: "peac-policy/0.1"
rules:
- id: allow-licensed
match:
purpose: [train, inference]
licensing_mode: licensed
decision: allow
receipts: required
# Result: Crawlers obey robots.txt, respect RSL tokens,
# and PEAC provides cryptographic proof of compliancePayment Rail Comparison
PEAC works with multiple payment rails, each suited for different use cases:
| Rail | Best For | Settlement | Package |
|---|---|---|---|
| x402 | Micropayments, crypto, agent-to-agent | Instant (on-chain) | @peac/rails-x402 |
| Stripe | SaaS, subscriptions, cards globally | T+2 days | @peac/rails-stripe |
| Razorpay | UPI, India market, netbanking | Instant (UPI) | @peac/rails-razorpay |
| Card | Generic card billing, any processor | T+2 days | @peac/rails-card |
Get Started with PEAC
Add verifiable receipts to your existing policy stack.