Abstract:
Fast (fast.xyz) is a verifiable settlement infrastructure for AI-native work: humans, agents, services, and merchants coordinating work and settling outcomes, including payments, programmatically. This talk presents recent progress on Fast at Pi Squared Labs (pi2labs.org), starting with the FastSet weak consensus protocol that powers the Fast network. Unlike traditional systems that serialize transactions into one global order, FastSet processes independent claims in parallel, avoiding unnecessary consensus bottlenecks while preserving precise settlement semantics.
A central theme of the talk is verification. Fast does not treat correctness as an afterthought or a layer of audits around an implementation. The protocol is designed so that critical behavior can be specified, executed, and checked with formal methods. This gives stronger guarantees about what the system is allowed to accept, not just whether the network accepted it. The talk will also connect the protocol to real products: fast.xyz as the user and developer entry point, app.fast.xyz as an app for holding user and agent accounts and signing transactions, and shop.fast.xyz as a working example of agent-first commerce, where AI agents can discover merchants, prepare purchases, and participate in checkout flows.
Short Bio:
Grigore Roșu is Co-Founder and CEO of Pi Squared Labs, where he is building Fast, a verified payment and settlement system for agents and AI-native work. He is also a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After earning his Ph.D. in computer science from UC San Diego, he worked at NASA on critical spacecraft software. He created the K Framework, a formal methods framework for defining and verifying programming languages and systems, and founded Runtime Verification, where his work helped bring formal verification to distributed financial systems and secure billions in assets. Grigore is an IEEE Fellow and AAAS Fellow, known for his work on runtime verification, matching logic, and practical formal methods.
