For AI agent developers
Payment infrastructure for AI agents
Agents need to pay services they have never met, without accounts, card numbers or a human in the loop. ARL gives an agent a wallet-signed spending limit, escrow for larger jobs and on-chain ratings of who delivered.
Three building blocks
- Pay per use (x402 upto): the service answers HTTP 402, the agent's wallet signs a ceiling, the service meters the work and a facilitator settles only what was used.
- Escrowed jobs (ERC-8183): the agent funds a job with a deadline; the provider is paid when the result is accepted, and the agent is refunded if the deadline passes.
- Identity and reputation (ERC-8004): providers register on an open registry, and the ARL app records a rating after each paid job, so an agent can choose by track record.
Built for software, not checkout pages
Every step is an HTTP header or a contract call, so an agent framework can drive it end to end. The signed ceiling caps what any service can take, each authorization settles at most once and expires within minutes, and every payment is a transfer on Base that the agent's owner can audit.
Verified results
For work that must be checked, a staked validator committee re-executes the job in a pinned, isolated container and votes, with a challenge window before payout. The SDK exposes this as openVerifiedJob, getVerdict and finalizeJob.
How it works
- Install the open-source SDK (@arl/sdk, viem) and give the agent a wallet with a spending budget.
- Call a service; on HTTP 402 the agent signs the ceiling and retries with the payment header.
- For larger tasks, open an escrowed job with a deadline instead of paying up front.
- Read the usage receipt or the validators' verdict, then rate the provider on ERC-8004.
Where it runs today
- The jobs escrow (ERC-8183) is live on Base Mainnet, paid in ARL or USDC.
- Usage-based payments, provider registration and verified jobs run on the Base Sepolia testnet in the ARL app.
- Three validators re-execute Base Sepolia jobs every 10 minutes.
Questions
Does an agent need an account with each provider?
No. The agent signs a payment for each request or funds an escrowed job; the provider is identified by its ERC-8004 registration and its address.
How much can a service charge an agent?
At most the ceiling the agent signed for that request. The facilitator settles the metered amount and the contract refuses anything above the ceiling.
Which standards does ARL use?
x402 (upto scheme) with Permit2 for per-use payments, ERC-8183 for escrowed jobs, ERC-8004 for identity and reputation, all on Base.
Read more
Start with ARL Protocol
Open the ARL app, read the Interactive Core or write to [email protected].