Infoblox advances DNS-AID draft, GoDaddy co-authors ANS draft, both aim to make DNS the open identity layer for AI agents. The next catalyst: whether cloud and AI platforms join or compete.
GoDaddy Inc. currently carries an Alpha Score of n/a, giving AlphaScala's model a neutral read on the setup.
Infoblox and GoDaddy on Wednesday threw their combined weight behind two complementary open standards designed to prevent any single company from controlling how AI agents identify, discover, and verify one another. The announcement is a preemptive move to shape the infrastructure layer of the agentic internet before proprietary alternatives lock in. For traders in GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) and the broader internet infrastructure sector, the move frames a risk that has not yet been priced: the possibility that the agent economy fragments into closed ecosystems, eroding the value of open-web incumbents and creating new gatekeepers.
The surface-level reading is that two infrastructure companies are proposing technical standards for AI agents. The deeper market reading is about who controls the identity and discovery layer of the agentic web–and whether the existing Domain Name System (DNS) becomes the backbone of agent trust rather than a new proprietary registry.
AI agents are beginning to act across websites, applications, and enterprise environments. They will need to know which counterparty they are interacting with and whether that counterparty is verified. If a small group of vendors, registrars, or platforms controls that identity and discovery layer, the open web could fracture into walled gardens where agents can only interact within a single provider’s ecosystem.
Infoblox and GoDaddy are positioning open standards as the antidote. Their joint announcement states a shared belief that “no single or small group of vendors, registries or platforms should control how AI agents are named, discovered or verified.” That posture reflects more than altruism. Both companies operate businesses built on open, federated internet infrastructure. A proprietary agent-identity layer would threaten their relevance. An open, DNS-based layer would extend their existing moats into the next computing paradigm.
Chen’s historical parallel is directly applicable. DNS replaced the centralized host-table system with an open, federated protocol. Forty years later, the same DNS infrastructure carries a trust and reach that any new proprietary registry would struggle to replicate. The risk Infoblox and GoDaddy are trying to neutralize is a rerun of that pre-DNS lock-in at the agent layer.
The two efforts are complementary. DNS-AID (DNS for AI Discovery), advanced by Infoblox, focuses on agent discovery: defining how agents’ capabilities and endpoints are published in DNS so other systems can find them. Agent Name Service (ANS), co-authored by GoDaddy, focuses on agent identity, naming, and verification using DNS and public key infrastructure (PKI).
Put simply: ANS answers who an agent is, and DNS-AID helps others find what it can do. Both are being developed in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with the explicit goal of enabling independent implementations and avoiding single-vendor control.
Both standards share a DNS and PKI foundation and are designed to fit alongside each other within DNS as complementary parts of an open agentic internet.
DNS is already globally deployed, federated, extensible, and supported by mature operational and security practices. Building agent identity and discovery on DNS means inheriting decades of operational experience, caching infrastructure, anycast resilience, governance processes, and an installed base that reaches every device on the internet.
SVCB records provide an extensible record format that can carry agent capabilities, endpoints, and protocols. Because they are an existing part of the DNS standard, they require no new infrastructure. That lowers the barrier to adoption and makes it harder for a proprietary alternative to gain traction by offering a simpler onboarding experience.
Chen called DNS “the gold standard for digital trust and a scalable foundation where agents, Model Context Protocols, services and endpoints can be discovered and trusted through the same architecture that already powers the global economy.” That framing is a direct shot across the bow of any vendor building a closed agent registry.
GoDaddy is the world’s largest domain name registrar. If ANS becomes the standard for agent identity, every AI agent operator will need a domain name to establish a verifiable identity. That dynamic would directly benefit GoDaddy’s core business without requiring the company to build a new proprietary naming system.
The ANS design lets operators use domains they already own. Nothing is minted on a new registry. The existing domain name system becomes the identity layer, making domain ownership more valuable in a world filled with autonomous agents. For GoDaddy, this is a defensive moat extension that does not depend on winning a new platform war.
Infoblox’s core business is DDI (DNS, DHCP, and IP address management) and preemptive security. DNS-AID extends that franchise into the agent economy. If agents publish their capabilities and endpoints via DNS, Infoblox’s DDI platform becomes a natural control point for enterprises that need to manage, secure, and monitor agent interactions.
By advancing DNS-AID as an IETF draft and open-source software, Infoblox positions itself as a steward of the standard while ensuring no single vendor can capture it. The company’s call for cloud providers, agent platform vendors, registrars, security companies, and standards organizations to join the open standards work is both a genuine invitation and a signal that any proprietary alternative will face a broad coalition.
Several adoption milestones would confirm that the open-standard approach is gaining traction and reducing the risk of a closed agent identity layer.
The threat that open standards fail to gain traction is real. Several developments would strengthen the case for a proprietary agent identity layer and weaken the DNS-based thesis.
Risk to watch: The biggest threat is not technical. It is timing. If open standards do not mature before proprietary alternatives embed in enterprise workflows, the battle could be lost before it begins.
Infoblox and GoDaddy have placed a structural bet that the agentic internet will inherit the same federated principles as the web itself. The announcement marks the first public move in what will be a long standards campaign. The next concrete marker is whether the IETF drafts gain momentum and whether cloud and AI platform vendors join the effort or build competing systems. For a broader view on how infrastructure positioning is shaping equity narratives, see stock market analysis.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.