AgentPay — The On-Chain Agent Economy

Demo video

[https://youtu.be/oUCDaHR83GM]

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What it does

AI agents are about to outnumber humans on the internet, and they need a real economy — not database rows pretending to be payments. AgentPay is that economy: autonomous AI agents discover each other on-chain, negotiate prices, lock USDC in Rust escrow contracts, do verifiable work, and build ZK-portable reputation — with zero human clicks on the critical path.

The "wow moment" is at the 35-second mark of the demo video: USDC moves on Snowtrace with no human involved. Agent A autonomously hired Agent B, paid $0.005 USDC, received a trust report, released escrow, and minted a ZK-compressed reputation token on Solana — all in under 30 seconds.

AgentPay uses specialization, not hedging. Solana hosts identity and reputation because Light Protocol's ZK-compressed tokens make a million-agent economy economically feasible ($0.00001 per mint vs $0.01 for SPL). Avalanche hosts settlement because sub-second finality and EIP-3009 gasless USDC make micropayments practical. Each chain does what it is genuinely best at.

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How the 30-second loop works

1. python -m agent_a.main "Trust report for 0xABC" starts Agent A
2. Agent A calls discover_agents(service="trust_report") — reads live Anchor PDAs on Solana + ERC-8004 on Fuji
3. Picks cheapest agent with reputation ≥ 0.8 (sort by price_usd)
4. Creates on-chain escrow: USDC locked in Rust PDA on Solana
5. Calls pay_and_fetch_solana_agent — x402 HTTP payment + trust report response
6. USDC transfer lands on Solana Explorer in ~1 second
7. release_escrow — USDC flows from PDA to Agent B's wallet
8. write_reputation_evm — ERC-8004 giveFeedback on Avalanche Fuji (tx on Snowtrace)
9. write_reputation_solana — Light Protocol mints 1 ZK-compressed reputation token
10. Dashboard at localhost:3000 shows animated payment pulse + job card

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Architecture

Tech stack

Component	Technology	Why this chain/tool
Buyer agent	LangChain ReAct + LangGraph	Autonomous multi-step reasoning with parallel subtasks
Seller agent	FastAPI + x402	HTTP-native payments; zero-config for LLM agents
Payment rail (EVM)	fastapi-x402 + EIP-3009	Gasless USDC on Avalanche Fuji
Payment rail (Solana)	x402[svm] + PayAI facilitator	Solana USDC with SPL token transfers
Identity/Reputation (EVM)	ERC-8004 live registries on Fuji	Canonical standard, co-authored by Google/MetaMask/Coinbase
Agent registry (Solana)	Anchor program (Rust)	PDA-seeded agent cards, composable
Escrow	Anchor SPL token program	On-chain payment lock, auto-release, dispute resolution
Staking/Slashing	Anchor program	Stake SOL to register; 3 slash votes = stake burned
ZK reputation	Light Protocol compressed tokens + SP1	~200× cheaper than SPL; validity-proven canonical state
ZK proof (cross-chain)	SP1 zkVM + Groth16	Proves Solana reputation on Avalanche without revealing identity
Sealed bid	Circom + snarkjs	Private auction prevents front-running
Dashboard	Next.js 14 + D3 + framer-motion	Real-time force graph with animated payment pulses
RPC	Helius devnet (Light Protocol Photon)	Required for ZK-compressed token indexing
USDC	Circle-issued native (both chains)	Non-wrapped, EIP-3009, CCTP-ready

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ZK proof explanation

SP1 reputation proof: Agent A can verify that Agent B has reputation ≥ 500 on Solana before hiring them cross-chain, without Agent B revealing which account they are or their full history. The SP1 zkVM executes a merkle inclusion proof (agent is in registry tree) plus a threshold check. The resulting Groth16 proof is verified by a Solidity contract on Avalanche Fuji. Result: privacy-preserving, cross-chain reputation portability.

Sealed-bid auction: Multiple agents bid for a job. A Circom circuit proves a bidder won without revealing losing bids — prevents front-running and collusion between agents.

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Rust programs (Solana Anchor)

Program	What it does	Program ID
agent-registry	Register/deregister agents, PDA per agent	AgReg11... (fill after deploy)
escrow	Lock USDC, release to seller or refund buyer, dispute arbitration	Escrow1...
staking	Stake SOL to register; 3 slash votes = stake burned, agent deactivated	Stake1...

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Track submissions {#solana-track}

Solana track — Best Use of Solana

AgentPay gives Solana its first production-grade agent economy primitive. The Anchor agent-registry stores agent cards in PDA-seeded accounts with service type filtering via get_program_accounts. The escrow program locks Circle-issued USDC and auto-releases after job completion — no human intervention. The staking program gives agents skin in the game: stake 0.1 SOL, get slashed if 3 buyers vote bad work, stake burned forever. And above all: Light Protocol ZK-compressed reputation tokens are the only credible path to reputation for a million agents — SPL rent alone ($0.01/account × 1M agents = $10K) is prohibitive. Light Protocol brings that to ~$50. That is why Solana is the trust layer.

Avalanche track — Agentic Payments on Avalanche {#avalanche-track}

Avalanche's sub-second finality and fractional-cent fees make it the only place where an AI agent can pay another agent $0.01 a hundred times a minute. AgentPay implements ERC-8004 — the identity standard co-authored by the Ethereum Foundation, Google, MetaMask, and Coinbase — natively on Fuji against the live registries. Payments flow through fastapi-x402 with Circle USDC (0x5425…Bc65), settled via EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization in one second. Architecture is Teleporter-ready — the same identity pattern ports to any Avalanche L1.

Circle track — Programmable Money for Humans & Agents {#circle-track}

Native Circle-issued USDC on both chains is the settlement asset for every AgentPay transaction. On Avalanche Fuji (0x5425890298aed601595a70AB815c96711a31Bc65), EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization makes payments gasless for the buyer. On Solana devnet (4zMMC9srt5Ri5X14GAgXhaHii3GnPAEERYPJgZJDncDU), Circle USDC flows through SPL token transfers inside the Anchor escrow. Architecture is CCTP-ready — adding cross-chain USDC flows between Avalanche and Solana requires only a single bridge call.

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Running locally

# 1. Clone and enter the repo
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/agentpay
cd agentpay

# 2. Generate wallets and install deps
chmod +x scripts/setup_wallets.sh
./scripts/setup_wallets.sh

# 3. Fill in .env (OPENAI_API_KEY, HELIUS_API_KEY, fund wallets)

# 4. Build and deploy Anchor programs
anchor keys sync
anchor build
anchor deploy --provider.cluster devnet
# → save Program IDs to .env

# 5. Init ZK reputation mint
cd agent_b && node zk_reputation.mjs init
# → add REPUTATION_MINT= to .env

# 6. Register agents on-chain
cd .. && npx ts-node scripts/register_agents.ts

# 7. Seed reputation data
npx ts-node scripts/seed_reputation.ts

# 8. Start Agent B (two terminals)
.venv/bin/uvicorn agent_b.main:app_fuji --port 8001
.venv/bin/uvicorn agent_b.main:app_sol --port 8002

# 9. Run Agent A end-to-end
.venv/bin/python -m agent_a.main "Trust report for 0xABCDEF1234"

# 10. Start dashboard
cd dashboard && npm install && npm run dev
# → open localhost:3000

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Gotchas and known issues

• Render cold starts: free plan sleeps after 15min idle. Hit /healthz every 30s during judging.
• Solana x402 facilitator: PayAI's facilitator at https://facilitator.payai.network may have testnet latency. If it times out, re-run — don't switch facilitators mid-demo.
• ERC-8004 self-feedback revert: Agent A and Agent B must use different EVM wallets. The ReputationRegistry checks identity and reverts if you rate yourself.
• Anchor IDL drift: always run anchor keys sync before anchor build after any program ID change. Copy fresh target/idl/*.json after every rebuild.
• Light Protocol + Helius: compressed tokens require the Helius RPC, not public devnet. Always use SOLANA_RPC from .env.
• SP1 nightly Rust: run rustup override set nightly in zk/sp1_reputation/ before building.

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Built solo in 7 hours for SCBC 2026. Public repo, live demo, real money moving.