Praeco

Paid by the read, not the month. A publishing platform where a single article sells for a cent, paid instantly in USDC on Arc - settled straight to the writer, with no subscription and no floor.

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

Follow @heypraeco on X.

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The problem

For as long as a payment couldn't be smaller than ~30¢ after fees, there was no way to sell a 5¢ article. The only move was to bundle a month and charge $10. Every subscription is a quiet admission that the real unit was too small to sell on its own.

Circle Gateway removes that floor - gasless, batched USDC payments as small as a fraction of a cent, settled on Arc in under half a second. Praeco is what a publishing platform looks like when the smallest unit is finally sellable.

What it does

• Read by the lepton. Every article is priced per read (~$0.01). One click pays the writer directly in USDC; the content unlocks.
• No wallet friction. A reader becomes a "citizen" with a username and a Golden Relic - an ancient code that encrypts a wallet minted for them. No extension, no seed phrase, no card. The relic is the only key; the database stores ciphertext only.
• Tip, like, subscribe. Leave a tip on top of a read, like a piece, follow a writer - all free.
• Publish and earn. Write a piece, set a per-read price, publish. Add collaborators and each read splits automatically by share. Withdraw earnings to any wallet, anytime.
• Status you can see. Reading and writing earn renown, which raises your rank (Plebeian -> Citizen -> Patrician -> Senator -> Consul) and the gold laurel wreath beside your name.
• A paying agent. Give the Reader-Agent a topic and a budget; it reads the catalogue, decides which pieces are worth the toll, pays the writers itself, and briefs you - every decision logged.

How payments work (the Circle/Arc stack)

Layer	Use
x402	Every paid resource (/api/read/[id], /api/tip, /api/pro) returns HTTP 402 with payment requirements; the buyer signs and retries.
Circle Gateway batching	GatewayClient.pay() settles gasless, batched USDC payments; BatchFacilitatorClient verifies + settles server-side.
Custodial wallets	Each citizen's wallet is minted + pre-funded from a treasury and its key encrypted under the relic (scrypt + AES-GCM), so paying is one click.
Withdraw	GatewayClient.withdraw() cashes earnings out to any address on Arc.
USDC on Arc	Native settlement; reads, tips, splits, and the Pro subscription all settle in test USDC.

The on-chain settlement (deposits, batch settlements, withdrawals) is verifiable on the Arc testnet explorer; per-read authorizations are batched off-chain, which is what makes sub-cent payments economical.

Pro

Reading, tipping, publishing, and earning are always free. Pro is an optional paid tier that unlocks studio writing tools (draft / improve / suggest title, teaser, price), capped per day. It's paid in USDC from the citizen's wallet - a creator-tools subscription, never a paywall on content.

Stack

• Next.js 16 (App Router, React 19) · Tailwind 4
• Neon Postgres
• Circle @circle-fin/x402-batching · viem (arcTestnet)
• OpenAI (gpt-4o) for the Reader-Agent and the writing studio
• GSAP + Lenis + Framer Motion for the editorial, antiquity-themed UI

Run it locally

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local   # then fill in the values below

# generate the treasury/seller wallets, then fund the buyer wallet
npm run generate-wallets     # prints a buyer address -> fund at https://faucet.circle.com (Arc Testnet)

# create the database schema
node --env-file=.env.local scripts/reset.mjs

npm run dev                  # http://localhost:3000

Required env in .env.local:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://…            # Neon
SELLER_PRIVATE_KEY=0x…  SELLER_ADDRESS=0x…
BUYER_PRIVATE_KEY=0x…   BUYER_ADDRESS=0x…   # treasury that pre-funds citizen wallets
PRAECO_SESSION_SECRET=…              # openssl rand -hex 32
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-…                  # platform key for the AI features

Try it

1. Become a citizen - pick a username, watch your Golden Relic forge, save it.
2. Read a piece for a lepton; tip the writer; check your wreath in the nav.
3. Publish something in the Studio; add a collaborator to see splits accrue.
4. Send the agent - /agent, give it a topic and a budget, watch it pay writers and brief you.
5. Cash out from your dashboard at /me.

Notes

• Testnet only - all amounts are Circle test USDC.
• The payment rail and /api/premium/* test harness are derived from Circle's open-source arc-nanopayments reference (Apache-2.0); everything else - citizenship, the relic/encryption, renown and wreaths, splits, tipping, follow/like, the Reader-Agent, Pro, and the UI - is original to Praeco.
• The relic is the only key to an account. Lose it and the vault is sealed (as with any seed phrase); email backup is on the roadmap.

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The praeco was Rome's public crier, paid to carry the news. The lepton was the smallest Greek coin. Praeco pays the crier for every retelling - one lepton at a time.

Find us on X: @heypraeco