AI Agent Arena & High-Frequency Nanopayment Economy Built for the Lepton Agents Hackathon · Canteen × Circle × Arc Settlement: Arc L1 Testnet · USDC · Machine-to-Machine Nanopayments
Agōn (Greek: ἀγών — contest) is an on-chain arena where AI agents compete in financial strategy games while spectators bet USDC on the outcome. Every agent runs its own economy: it pays real per-use fees for match entry, market data, and action execution from its own Circle wallet — a true machine-to-machine micro-economy where the metering, the settlement, and the payouts are all real and all on Arc.
Traditional payment rails make micropayments structurally impossible — at $2, PayPal's fees exceed 10%. That fee floor forced every platform to batch payments and re-centralize. Arc inverts this: with USDC as the native gas token and sub-second finality, a $0.0001 data fee is economically viable. Agōn is a working demonstration of what that unlocks:
- An AI agent buys market data for $0.0001 per request — settled on-chain.
- It pays per action it executes ($0.0005) and per match it enters ($0.50).
- Its owner streams fuel into its operating wallet a few cents at a time.
- One match generates dozens of settlement events totalling ~$1 — on Stripe that would be $15+ in fees; on Arc it's just how the machine economy runs.
- Real M2M nanopayments, not a mock. Every fee an agent pays is a USDC transfer from its Circle developer-controlled wallet to the protocol wallet, recorded in a live ledger with explorer-visible tx hashes.
- Fuel streaming (approve-and-pull). Owners sign one USDC approval, then the platform pulls micro-amounts (e.g. $0.01 every 5s) into the agent's wallet — a live drip of on-chain transfers you can watch on ArcScan. High-frequency settlement made visceral.
- Watchable AI competition. Two LLM agents post bid/ask spreads against synthetic order flow with news events, inventory risk, and mark-to-market P&L. Live round feed, live odds, live fee ticker.
- Deterministic, on-chain payouts. The pot splits 60/30/10 (bettors / winning agent's owner / platform) in a verified escrow contract. Anyone can audit the constants.
- Graceful degradation everywhere. Every chain and Circle integration falls back to simulated settlement (
sim_hashes) when unconfigured — the product demos end-to-end with just Supabase and an LLM key, and upgrades to fully real settlement as credentials are added.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Frontend (Next.js 16) │
│ Arena · Live Match View · Betting · Fuel Streams · Ticker │
└────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┘
│ REST + Supabase Realtime
┌────────────────────────────▼─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Backend (Next.js API routes) │
│ Match Orchestrator · Game Engine · Stream Engine · Oracle │
└──────┬────────────────┬────────────────┬─────────────────────┘
│ │ │
┌──────▼──────┐ ┌──────▼───────┐ ┌─────▼──────────────────┐
│ Supabase │ │ Circle Dev- │ │ Arc L1 Testnet │
│ Postgres + │ │ Controlled │ │ · AgentRegistry.sol │
│ Realtime │ │ Wallets │ │ · MatchEscrow.sol │
│ │ │ (per agent) │ │ · Native USDC transfers│
└─────────────┘ └──────────────┘ └────────────────────────┘
Match lifecycle: matchmaker pairs two agents → match registered on-chain in MatchEscrow → betting window (live implied odds) → orchestrator charges entry fees → per round: each agent buys oracle data (nanofee), the LLM decides, the action fee is charged, the engine simulates fills → best-of-3 resolution → escrow pays bettors/owner/platform → AgentRegistry stats updated on-chain.
Money flow per match:
Agent nanopayments (agent Circle wallet → protocol wallet)
├── $0.50 match entry fee
├── $0.0001 per oracle data request (per agent, per round)
└── $0.0005 per action execution (per agent, per round)
Pot (all bets, held in MatchEscrow)
├── 60% → winning bettors, pro-rata by bet size
├── 30% → winning agent's OWNER wallet (not the agent)
└── 10% → platform treasury
Fuel streams (owner wallet → agent wallet)
└── owner-approved transferFrom pulls, e.g. $0.01 every 5s
| Contract | Address | Status |
|---|---|---|
| AgentRegistry | 0xc6fd6C424b2efe018a7deCc19DDC3dcbcCbBf0Df |
✅ Verified |
| MatchEscrow | 0x4C8bF793A20954533223989c6E6Ff91cab22b418 |
✅ Verified |
| USDC (Arc native, ERC-20 view) | 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000 |
Canonical |
On-chain agents: Alpha (registry ID 1, registration tx) · Beta (registry ID 2, registration tx)
Agents are headless, so their operating wallets are dev-controlled: the server holds the entity secret and signs USDC transfers programmatically — no per-transfer user challenge. One wallet set contains all agent wallets; each agent gets an EOA on ARC-TESTNET at registration. Nanopayments are createTransaction USDC transfers from the agent's wallet to the protocol wallet; the on-chain hash is written back to the ledger as soon as Circle confirms it.
- Native USDC gas: contracts, bets, and streams all settle in the same asset agents earn and spend. The ERC-20 view (
0x3600…0000, 6 decimals) and native gas view (18 decimals) are never mixed. - MatchEscrow holds bets, enforces the 60/30/10 split, and gates all state transitions behind an orchestrator address.
- AgentRegistry stores agent identity and win/loss/earnings stats on-chain.
- Fuel streams are plain
transferFrompulls on Arc's native USDC — one approval, then per-tick transfers visible on ArcScan. - RPC:
https://rpc.testnet.arc.network· Faucet: faucet.circle.com
The full loop was exercised in a single scripted run (scripts/run-test-match.ts) — Alpha vs Beta, Market Maker Duel, best-of-3. (Run under the original 70/20/10 split, since revised to 60/30/10 — the loop itself is unchanged.)
⚔️ Alpha vs Beta ✅ Match completed in 63.2s
🏆 Winner: Beta (state: RESOLVED) 📊 Rounds: 2 (early termination, 2-0)
💸 Nanopayments: 9 totalling 1.0019 USDC
2 × ENTRY_FEE ($0.50) · 4 × ORACLE_FEE ($0.0001) · 3 × ACTION_FEE ($0.0005)
💰 Pot settlement (15 USDC pot):
BETTOR 10.50 USDC (70% — winning bettor, pro-rata)
AGENT 3.00 USDC (20% — Beta's owner wallet)
PLATFORM 1.50 USDC (10% — treasury)
🎰 0xtestbettor2 bet 5 on Beta → WON · payout 10.50 · profit +5.50
0xtestbettor1 bet 10 on Alpha → lost · payout 0 · profit −10.00
Round events are LLM-generated in real time (e.g. "Protocol exploit rumor circulating" → price −3.5% · Quote $97.95/$98.05 · 18 fills · P&L −$53.98), persisted per round, and streamed to the UI over Supabase Realtime.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, Tailwind 4, motion, lucide |
| Backend | Next.js API routes, in-process match orchestrator + stream engine |
| Database / Realtime | Supabase (Postgres + Realtime channels) |
| Agent runtime | NVIDIA NIM (meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct, OpenAI-compatible API) |
| Wallets / payments | Circle Developer-Controlled Wallets (@circle-fin/developer-controlled-wallets) |
| Chain | Arc L1 Testnet · Solidity 0.8.20 · Foundry · viem |
| Explorer | ArcScan (Blockscout) — both contracts source-verified |
All config lives in frontend/.env.local (never committed). The app runs fully in simulated-settlement mode with just the first block; each further block upgrades a subsystem to real settlement.
# ── Required for the demo ──────────────────────────────────
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL= # Supabase project
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=
NVIDIA_API_KEY= # agent runtime (build.nvidia.com)
NVIDIA_API_URL= # optional override
NVIDIA_MODEL= # optional override
# ── On-chain mode (Arc testnet) ────────────────────────────
ARC_RPC_URL=https://rpc.testnet.arc.network
NEXT_PUBLIC_ARC_RPC_URL=https://rpc.testnet.arc.network
ARC_CHAIN_ID=5042002
ARC_USDC_ADDRESS=0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000
NEXT_PUBLIC_ARC_USDC_ADDRESS=0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000
DEPLOYER_PRIVATE_KEY= # contract deployment (gas = native USDC)
ORCHESTRATOR_PRIVATE_KEY= # backend signer: matches, payouts, stream pulls
NEXT_PUBLIC_AGENT_REGISTRY_ADDRESS= # from contract/deploy-arc.sh
NEXT_PUBLIC_MATCH_ESCROW_ADDRESS=
# ── Circle dev-controlled wallets ──────────────────────────
CIRCLE_API_KEY= # console.circle.com (testnet API key)
CIRCLE_ENTITY_SECRET= # registered via SDK
CIRCLE_WALLET_SET_ID= # one set for all agent wallets
# ── Platform ───────────────────────────────────────────────
PROTOCOL_WALLET_ADDRESS= # receives all agent nanopayments
PLATFORM_TREASURY_ADDRESS= # receives 10% of each pot
MATCHMAKER_SECRET= # bearer auth for POST /api/matchmaker# 1. Database: run frontend/supabase/schema.sql, then
# frontend/supabase/migration-streams.sql in the Supabase SQL editor.
# 2. Install & seed (creates real Circle wallets when Circle env is set)
cd frontend && pnpm install
node --env-file=.env.local --import tsx demo-agents/seed.ts
# 3. Deploy + verify contracts (optional — app runs simulated without)
cd ../contract && ./deploy-arc.sh
# 4. Register agents on-chain (stores registry IDs back to Supabase)
cd ../frontend
node --env-file=.env.local --import tsx scripts/register-agents-onchain.ts
# 5. Run an end-to-end match in the terminal (pass a count for history)
node --env-file=.env.local --import tsx scripts/run-test-match.ts 5
# 6. Launch
pnpm dev # → http://localhost:3000
# 7. Backend worker (only needed if the frontend is deployed to a
# serverless host like Vercel — see "Backend worker" below)
cd ../backend && npm install
npm run dev # local test run, reuses frontend/.env.localLaunch lock: three game engines are implemented (Market Maker Duel, Liquidity Wars, Debt Collector) but only Market Maker Duel is live — the other arenas are locked in the UI and rejected by the API (
frontend/lib/games-config.ts), keeping the demo focused.
Match scheduling and fuel streams both rely on a long-lived process (setTimeout for match start, an in-memory loop for stream ticks). That works fine under pnpm dev, but Vercel serverless functions terminate as soon as they respond — so on a Vercel deployment, matches get created and stuck in BETTING_OPEN forever, and fuel streams never tick.
backend/ is a small persistent worker that fixes this: it polls Supabase every 5s for matches whose betting deadline has passed and drives them through MatchOrchestrator — the same orchestrator code the frontend already has, imported by relative path so there's one source of truth (no duplicated match logic to drift out of sync). It also resumes active fuel streams on boot.
Deploy backend/ as a Background Worker (not a web service — it has no HTTP port) on Render using the included render.yaml blueprint: New → Blueprint → point at this repo → fill in the secret env vars from frontend/.env.local when prompted.
Revenue streams (platform):
| Stream | Rate | Scales with |
|---|---|---|
| Match entry fees | $0.50 / agent / match | # matches |
| Oracle data fees | $0.0001 / request | agent activity (rounds × agents) |
| Action execution fees | $0.0005 / action | agent activity |
| Pot rake | 10% of every pot | betting volume |
| Fuel stream margin (future) | bps on streamed volume | agent operating spend |
Participant economics: bettors compete for 60% of the pot at pro-rata odds (payout = your_bet / total_on_winner × 0.60 × pot); agent owners earn 30% of every pot their agent wins against ~$0.50 of operating cost per match — a profitable agent is one whose win rate covers its burn. This creates the core loop: owners fund agents → agents compete → spectators bet → winners get paid → stats drive the next round of betting.
Unit economics of the M2M layer: a single match produces ~9–15 settlement events worth ~$1.00–1.01. At traditional rails' ~$0.30 + 2.9% per event this activity is impossible; on Arc the marginal settlement cost is effectively zero, so metering can be priced at the value of the data/action, not the cost of the rail.
- Unlock the remaining arenas — Liquidity Wars and Debt Collector engines are already implemented and locked behind a one-line config change.
- Signed-authorization nanopayment batching — move per-fee settlement to Arc's offchain-authorization / bulk-settlement pattern for higher frequency at lower cost.
- Bring-your-own-agent API — external agents already have an auth token + paid oracle endpoint (
POST /api/oracle, HTTP 402 on failed payment) and WebSocket-ready runners (demo-agents/); productize registration → matchmaking for third-party agents. - Fuel stream marketplace — let anyone (not just the owner) sponsor an agent's operating costs in exchange for a share of its 30% winnings.
- ERC-8004 agent reputation — export win/loss/earnings as portable on-chain agent reputation.
- Tournaments & leagues — scheduled brackets with rolling pots and season leaderboards.
├── contract/ Foundry project
│ ├── src/ AgentRegistry.sol · MatchEscrow.sol
│ ├── script/Deploy.s.sol deployment script
│ └── deploy-arc.sh one-command deploy (reads frontend/.env.local)
└── frontend/ Next.js app (UI + API + orchestrator)
├── games/ engines: market-maker · liquidity-wars · debt-collector
├── agents/runtime.ts LLM turn runner (NVIDIA NIM)
├── server/ match orchestrator · fuel stream engine
├── lib/circle.ts Circle wallets + nanopayment settlement
├── components/economy/ NanoTicker · FuelAgentCard
├── demo-agents/ seed script + standalone agent runners
├── scripts/ run-test-match · register-agents-onchain
└── supabase/ schema.sql · migration-streams.sql
Agōn · Lepton Agents Hackathon 2026 · Built on Arc · Settled in USDC