Analysis
The MCP Registry is scaling on bottom-up momentum while the A2A Registry remains an open RFC. As Salesforce ships its own 'A2A-compliant' label, the industry is trading formal governance for market-led connectivity.
We are witnessing a distinct bifurcation in agent infrastructure. On one side, tool discovery is accelerating through decentralized, developer-led momentum. On the other, the governance required for agents to find and trust one another remains stalled. This gap between how agents connect to data and how they connect to each other is the primary friction point for enterprise-grade systems.
The MCP Registry has become the industry’s engine for data integration. By standardizing how models interface with local and remote sources, it has effectively solved the last-mile problem. Developers no longer need custom API wrappers for every integration. As of October 13, 2026, the registry hit 42,753 servers. This rapid scaling proves that when you provide a clear, functional interface, builders will adopt it at scale.
Conversely, the A2A Registry formal specification has hit a wall. Development efforts have been redirected toward the AI Catalog and the Agent Registry Definition (ARD) as of August 2026. This shift leaves a vacuum in formal governance. Without a ratified standard, we lack a unified protocol for agents to advertise their capabilities, permissions, and identity in a secure, cross-vendor environment.
Market leaders are now moving to fill this void. With the Salesforce Winter ’27 release generally available on October 12, Agentforce’s native Third-Party Orchestration now extends across “any A2A-compliant ecosystem.” We are trading formal governance for vendor-led connectivity. As our earlier analysis of the label argued, what ships is protocol implementation plus a self-published agent card: the designation “provides a common language for connection, but it does not provide a guarantee of safety or identity.”
By defining compliance through product implementation rather than industry-wide consensus, Salesforce is shifting the landscape from de jure to de facto standards. This creates a complex environment for builders and investors.
The risk here is the creation of walled gardens. If agents only interoperate by adhering to the specific implementation of a dominant platform, we lose the neutrality of an open-source protocol. For builders, this means navigating a landscape where connectivity is abundant but trust is unverified. For executives and investors, the challenge is distinguishing between genuine, cross-vendor interoperability and vendor-specific lock-in. Until we reach a centralized, ratified standard, we must treat these connection claims with professional skepticism.
Blair Hayes works for Forkast.
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