Hedera Introduces Guarded Accounts for Autonomous AI Agents

Hedera has introduced Agent Accounts, a wallet infrastructure that lets AI agents hold, spend and settle funds on its network within user-defined controls.

Users can establish daily and per-transaction spending limits, approve recipient accounts and configure allowances from their wallets. Smart contracts govern the spending rules and help keep agent activity within those limits.

The accounts are designed for recurring tasks such as paying invoices, settling transactions and retrieving APIs without requiring a user to approve every action. They are non-custodial and provide an audit trail of agent actions and transactions.

The offering is currently presented through an early-access form. No general availability date, mainnet launch date or transaction count has been announced.

The product expands Hedera’s existing AI-agent transaction tooling. Its open-source Hedera Agent Kit includes programmable policies and hooks that can restrict tool use, transaction amounts and recipient addresses before transactions are submitted.

The agent tooling includes support for HBAR transfers, token operations, account management and consensus functions. A separate hosted Payments MCP, designed to let assistants make payments within user-defined limits, is still listed as coming soon.

Hedera also offers an Agent Lab for building transaction-executing agents against Hedera Testnet. The lab supports both autonomous execution and modes that require human approval.

The Agent Accounts page lists transaction fees below $0.001 for developers. The transaction type, network conditions and measurement time for that figure are not specified.