In 1990, Barnes & Noble had 1,300 physical storefronts optimized for human browsing—wide aisles, eye-level displays, impulse purchase endcaps. Today, Amazon's "storefront" is an API that serves 2.5 billion product queries daily to both humans and AI agents. The next transformation is already underway: from digital storefronts optimized for human clicks to agent networks optimized for autonomous commerce.

Traditional commerce infrastructure assumes human decision-makers will browse, compare, and purchase. Agentic commerce infrastructure assumes AI agents will query, analyze, and transact autonomously across networks of suppliers. This isn't a gradual evolution—it's a fundamental architectural shift that changes how product discovery, pricing, and fulfillment operate at the protocol level.

When a dental practice manager asks their AI agent to "find the best autoclave under $5,000 with same-day shipping," that agent doesn't browse websites like a human. It queries structured data across multiple discovery endpoints, compares specifications in milliseconds, and identifies optimal matches based on historical performance data. This isn't science fiction—it's happening right now, and it represents the most significant shift in commerce since the rise of mobile shopping.

Agentic commerce refers to AI-powered systems that act on behalf of the customer to discover, compare, and purchase products autonomously. Unlike traditional shopping assistants that simply provide recommendations, these intelligent agents make actual purchasing decisions within predefined parameters. As generative AI and large language models become more sophisticated, they're fundamentally changing how product discovery works in digital commerce.

Marketplaces extract value. Protocols create it. Here's the economic argument for why commerce will inevitably move to open protocols.

The internet runs on protocols. Email flows through SMTP. Websites serve via HTTP. Files transfer through FTP. These protocols created trillions in economic value while charging exactly zero fees. Now imagine if every email cost $0.30, every web request required platform approval, or file transfers took a 15% commission. That's today's commerce infrastructure - a toll booth at every turn.

The Commerce Mesh Protocol (CMP) applies the internet's economic model to commerce. Instead of platforms extracting rent, open protocols enable competition, innovation, and value creation at every layer. This isn't idealistic thinking - it's economic inevitability driven by the same forces that made proprietary networks obsolete.

What if commerce worked like the internet - open, interoperable, and owned by no one? We're building the protocol layer that makes this possible.

The Commerce Mesh Protocol (CMP) represents a fundamental shift in how digital commerce operates. Instead of closed platforms extracting rent from every transaction, we envision an open protocol where AI agents, brands, and buyers interact directly through standardized interfaces. This technical white paper outlines our vision, architecture, and implementation path for the future of agentic commerce.

Today, we're introducing the Commerce Mesh Protocol (CMP) - an open, decentralized protocol that fundamentally reimagines how digital commerce works. Instead of walled gardens and platform lock-in, we're building the coordination layer for AI-native commerce.