Layr8 is a decentralised, peer-to-peer messaging platform for secure, real-time communication between organisations, services and AI agents. It is built for multi-party collaboration and data sharing between organisations that need to trust each other’s identity, even competitors, without relying on one central system.
The problem it addresses is trust across boundaries. When agents and services from different teams or companies exchange work, each side needs proof of who sent a message and control over what that sender may do, and a shared central broker would put one party in charge of everyone else’s traffic.
At A Glance
| Vendor | Layr8 (Protocol Technologies, Inc.) |
|---|---|
| Category | Identity-based messaging and authorisation between agents and organisations |
| Identities covered | AI agent profiles and sessions, services, organisations identified by DIDs |
| Deployment | Managed cloud-hosted nodes; on-premises node licensing for Enterprise |
| Agentic AI | Agent identities, agent-to-agent messaging and shared memory for coding agent harnesses |
| Market classification | Authorisation |
What Layr8 Does
Layr8’s answer starts with the agent tools teams already use. A Claude Code session can, for example, ask a Codex session for a review, and each agent has its own identity and its own access settings for other agents and services.
Each organisation keeps its own enforcement point, so identity checks, policy and audit happen on its side of the boundary rather than in a shared service. Proof of identity travels with the messages themselves, using decentralised identifiers and verifiable credentials.
Products
Layr8 Node
The node is the core software that hosts an organisation’s agents and decides what reaches them. It gives developers DIDComm messaging with did:web support and DID resolution, and lets them set per-DID allow and deny policies, grant-based policies and grant revocation.
- Credential-based authorisation using Present Proof, with Bitstring Status Lists for revocation and suspension
- Hash-linked audit chains and metrics collection
- Go, Node.js, Python and Elixir SDKs
Agent Broker, Spaces And Memory
Developers running several coding agents often want them to cooperate without sharing a whole workspace. The broker is the local application that connects a harness such as Claude Code, Codex, Goose or pi to Layr8. A space holds the agents, services, connected accounts and access settings, all managed in the portal, while a registry stores skills, reference documents and protocol descriptions. Memory lets agents save decisions, preferences, facts and notes for later sessions, with control over who can see them. A message between sessions states the task, the input, the expected result and limits on what the recipient may do, but hands over no files, history or edit permissions, so each agent keeps control of its own workspace.
Key Shield
Key Shield, available on request, solves the problem of applications holding customers’ third-party API keys. The user types the key into a Layr8-hosted field and the application only ever receives an opaque tokenId. When the application sends a request through Layr8’s HTTP proxy, Layr8 swaps the placeholder for the real key, so the application never handles plaintext secrets.
How It Works
Layr8 combines local components, such as the broker, with hosted infrastructure. On a managed Space the node is run for the customer.
- Outbound flow. An agent sends each message through its own Layr8 node before it reaches the recipient’s DIDComm server.
- Inbound flow. Before delivering an inbound message, the node enforces authorisation policies, including allow and deny lists and verifiable credential validation, and writes an audit record of each decision.
- Encryption. Messages are packed with authenticated encryption using ECDH-1PU, and the sender’s identity is proven during decryption.
- Keys. Private keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and decrypted into a secure in-memory store at runtime.
- Security boundary. Everything inside an organisation’s boundary stays under its control and is not accessible to other organisations.
Identities And Systems Covered
| AI agents | Agent profiles are the named identities that sessions speak as; many sessions can share one profile |
|---|---|
| Sessions | Each running harness instance, reachable by nickname or session DID |
| Organisations and services | Identified by DIDs, currently did:web |
| API keys | Third-party API keys held by Key Shield |
| Credentials | W3C verifiable credentials issued and verified as signed JWTs |
Company Background
| Founded | 2021 |
|---|---|
| Legal entity | Protocol Technologies, Inc. |
| Standards work | With the Decentralized Identity Foundation and the DIDComm community |
Note: This overview is compiled from Layr8’s publicly available information as of 3 November 2026. It is provided for information only. NHI Mgmt Group does not endorse any vendor, and nothing on this page represents the opinions of NHI Mgmt Group.