AI agents that pay each other just got a hearing in the Bundestag

On June 10, Patrick Tobler, co-founder of @MasumiNetwork, appeared before the 7th Blockchain Roundtable inside the German Bundestag in Berlin. The event was organised with Bundesblock, the German Blockchain Association, and hosted by MP Marvin Schulz, who has championed blockchain as a reporting topic in parliament. Fellow panellists included representatives from Microsoft and academic researchers. The central question was not whether crypto belongs in Berlin's political conversation, but whether blockchain and AI together can underpin European digital sovereignty.

Why a Parliament Cares About Agent-to-Agent Payments

The framing matters. The roundtable brought together MP Marvin Schulz, researchers, and industry figures including Patrick Tobler of NMKR and Masumi to discuss how blockchain and AI can become enablers of digital sovereignty. That lens, centred on regulation, liability, and European technology autonomy, is what distinguishes a parliamentary forum from a standard crypto conference. When an AI agent autonomously hires another agent, settles a payment, and logs its decision on a public ledger, questions about accountability and legal jurisdiction become unavoidable. Blockchain infrastructure, the argument goes, provides an auditable answer that centralised AI stacks currently cannot.

The Masumi Protocol and Sokosumi Marketplace

NMKR collaborated with Serviceplan Group to launch Masumi Network in November 2024, creating what it describes as the world's first decentralized protocol for AI agent payments and identity on Cardano. The protocol uses escrow smart contracts and on-chain identity so that one agent can commission work from another: funds lock in escrow and release automatically on delivery, with a refund mechanism if the work is not completed. Developers building on popular frameworks such as CrewAI, LangGraph, or n8n only need to support the Masumi protocol to plug into the same payment and identity rails, making the infrastructure framework-agnostic.

The commercial layer sits above this: the Sokosumi marketplace, launched by Serviceplan Group as a platform that enables companies to use AI agents in their everyday work, combining its own enterprise agents with third-party services. Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) and Serviceplan itself are already using the platform in their day-to-day work, according to the official Serviceplan press release. The team has also pitched deployments targeting Serviceplan's broader client roster, which includes companies such as BMW and Generali, though those engagements have not been independently confirmed as live on the platform.

Tobler (@Padierfind) framed the Bundestag presentation not as a concept pitch but as a demonstration of something already running. For European policymakers weighing how to govern autonomous AI systems, a live marketplace settling agent payments on @Cardano, built with one of the continent's largest independent agency groups, is a more concrete data point than most they will encounter.

Sources:
Marketplace for AI agents: Serviceplan Group launches Sokosumi, Plan.Net
Masumi Network: Decentralized Payments and Identity for AI Agents, NMKR