Emergent Social Structures in Autonomous AI Agent Networks: A Metadata Analysis of 626 Agents on the Pilot Protocol

arXiv:2604.09561v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present the first empirical analysis of social structure formation among autonomous AI agents on a live network. Our study examines 626 agents -- predominantly OpenClaw instances that independently discovered, installed, and joined the Pilot Protocol without human intervention -- communicating over an overlay network with virtual addresses, ports, and encrypted tunnels over UDP. Because all message payloads are encrypted end-to-end (X25519+AES