Kuot — the recursive citation economy on Arc

Kuot (from Indonesian kutip, "to cite") is an autonomous AI research agent. It pays for the papers it reads with x402 nanopayments on Arc, then splits USDC back to every author whose work grounded the answer — gas-free and batched via Circle Gateway. Every answer is itself a paid resource: when another agent cites Kuot, a fraction flows recursively back to the original authors. Unclaimed rewards accrue yield in a USYC-style ERC-4626 vault (a self-funded MockUSYC stand-in on testnet — real USYC is institution-gated — with the same deposit/redeem interface) until they're claimed.

Built for the Lepton Agents Hackathon — Canteen × Circle × Arc (June 2026).

🔗 Live: https://kuot-azure.vercel.app · Repo: https://github.com/PugarHuda/kuot · On-chain: DEPLOYED.md

👋 Judges — see it real in 60 seconds

▶ Watch the 2-min demo (narrated + subtitled, end-to-end on the live app) — or click through it yourself: Everything below is live on Arc and links to Arcscan; nothing is a mockup.

1. /dashboard — live on-chain traction (USDC attributed, authors cited), read straight from the ledger. Hit "See every payment on-chain →" — every row opens on Arcscan. (Traction)
2. /dashboard/research — ask a question. Watch the multi-agent mesh work, the agent pay a source via x402 (click verify on Arcscan), and the 🔒 proof-of-grounding badge show N grounded · M dropped — the Adjudicator itself decides the split. Ask something off-topic → it pays no one. (Agency + Innovation)
3. Share your result from step 2 (Share button → /r/<id>) — the Cite panel previews the recursive split back to the authors; pay the toll from your own wallet to become a verifiable non-operator payer (/api/stats → externalPayers, chain truth). (Recursive reverse-x402)
4. /docs — 11 contracts live on Arc + a proven CCTP V2 round-trip; x402 · Gateway · Agent Wallets · StableFX/EURC · USYC. (Circle depth)

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What it does, in one run

1. Pay the sources. The agent pays the top source it reads a real x402 nanopayment, settled on Arc in USDC (gas-free, sub-cent — the Circle Gateway batched rail when KUOT_PAPER_URL is set, else a direct on-chain x402 transfer; both verifiable on Arcscan), under a budget cap it can never exceed — the "pay your sources" thesis in action (the split flows to authors at settle, step 3).
2. Ground the answer. A Planner, parallel Readers and a Fact-checker reason over the papers (Venice AI). Proof-of-grounding commits a tamper-evident keccak256 digest on-chain so only the authors whose work actually grounded the answer get paid.
3. Pay the authors — then pay them again. Every citation pays its author a nanopayment via AttributionLedger.attestAndSplit. Unclaimed shares accrue USYC yield until the author binds an ORCID and claims. When another agent cites Kuot (reverse-x402), a fraction of that payment flows recursively back to the original authors.

Differentiators

• The agent decides the payout — an Adjudicator LLM step splits the citation payment across the sources by how much each actually grounded the answer, and sets the total USDC (clamped 0.05–1.00); embedding/rank weighting is only the fallback. A genuine economic decision (src/lib/orchestrator.ts).
• Cite from your own wallet — the public share page (/r/[id]) lets any reader pay Kuot's reverse-x402 toll from their OWN wallet (one on-chain USDC transfer on Arc, verified by the existing tx-hash acceptor). GET /api/stats exposes externalPayers/externalPaidUSDC — distinct non-operator wallets that paid on-chain (chain truth, excludes the operator). A judge can generate verifiable external traction in ~60s.
• Recursive reverse-x402 — being cited earns money; the citation graph pays itself, depth after depth.
• Proof-of-grounding before pay — an on-chain digest; only grounding authors are paid.
• USYC-style yield — unclaimed rewards accrue in a real ERC-4626 vault (a self-funded MockUSYC stand-in on testnet; real USYC is institution-gated but shares the same redeem interface).
• Directional reputation-as-collateral — USDC bond, slashable on a false citation (ERC-8004) — trust as a from→to→context vector, not a single score.
• Agent-payable toll-booth — external agents pay Kuot to research via POST /api/research/x402 (Gateway x402, $0.001/paper) and via the kuot_research_paid MCP tool; one payment fans out to authors.
• The agent quotes its own work — a Kuot answer self-prices its citation fee and its recursive author-share by the fact-checker's confidence × grounding depth, and bids per source (rank/budget), instead of one flat price (src/lib/pricing.ts).
• Real publisher sources — webSources augments the academic corpus with live articles (Google News RSS / self-hosted RSSHub); a citation-toll settles to the publisher (Prior Art #01).
• Author onboarding — GET /api/stats (on-chain authorsOnboarded + attributed) and a shareable referral claim link (/dashboard/claim?orcid=…) turn citations into real, claimable earnings.

Circle / Arc stack

Gateway nanopayments · x402 · Agent Wallets · StableFX swap (on-chain USDC↔EURC) · USYC · CCTP · Contracts · USDC + EURC. 11 contracts live on Arc testnet (5042002) — see DEPLOYED.md for addresses + the on-chain proof transactions.

Architecture

User → /research ──► Agent (pays papers via x402/Gateway on Arc)
                       │
                       ├─ Planner → Readers ×N → Fact-checker → Summarizer → Adjudicator   (Venice)
                       ├─ proof-of-grounding  → GroundingRegistry.commit(digest)
                       └─ settle → AttributionLedger.attestAndSplit ──► authors paid (USDC)
                                     │                                   └─ unclaimed → USYC yield
                                     └─ reverse-x402 (/api/summaries) ──► cite Kuot → recursive split

Run it

npm install
cp .env.example .env     # fill ARC_RPC_URL, contract addresses, CIRCLE_*/VENICE_API_KEY
npm run dev              # http://localhost:3000

Contracts: cd contracts && forge test (124 Vitest + 59 Foundry green + 10 opt-in live-integration incl. a security fail-closed suite). Deploy with forge script script/Deploy.s.sol then script/DeployKuot.s.sol (see DEPLOYED.md). E2E: npm run e2e — 21 Playwright click-through tests against the live deploy: a smoke sweep of all 12 public pages (2xx + no uncaught JS error), the /cited ORCID-lookup interaction, the free-by-default research-depth step, the Cite-from-wallet button's no-wallet graceful failure, and real sidebar/navigation clicks.

Reproduce the traction

Drive real agent-to-agent payment volume yourself — an external agent probes the x402 toll-booth and pays to cite Kuot, settling Gateway-batched nanopayments on Arc:

DEV_PAY_TOKEN=… KUOT_BASE_URL=https://kuot-azure.vercel.app npm run traction -- 5

Each iteration is a real on-chain settlement (printed with its tx id); a fraction flows recursively back to the cited authors. Live totals: GET /api/stats and /dashboard.

Integrate (MCP)

Other agents can use — and pay — Kuot via the MCP server in mcp/ (npm run mcp): tools kuot_research, kuot_research_paid (x402 toll-booth), kuot_cite (reverse-x402), kuot_authors. See mcp/README.md.

For authors & communities

• Authors: kuot-azure.vercel.app/cited — a problem-first page (no crypto jargon): enter your ORCID, see what your citations have earned, claim in 2 minutes.
• Publishers / communities: INTEGRATE.md — add citation payments to your feed/catalog three ways (point agents at your sources · a claim link for contributors · a paid x402 endpoint).

Docs

ARC-OSS.md (reusable Arc primitives to fork — for the Open Source Showcase) · CIRCLE-STACK.md (every Circle primitive + live proof) · KUOT.md · DEPLOYED.md (addresses + proof txs) · DEMO.md (3-min demo script) · INTEGRATE.md (adopt it for your community) · SUBMISSION.md · FEEDBACK.md (Circle/Arc DX). MIT licensed.