Circle Agent Stack · Gateway · Arc
live on Arc
Kuot
The recursive citation economy on Arc. An AI agent pays for the papers it reads with x402 nanopayments, then splits USDC back to the authors whose work grounded the answer. Cite Kuot, and a fraction flows back again — depth after depth.
One run, end to end
From a question to a payment
Authority only ever narrows — each agent redelegates a smaller slice .
▶ Watch a real run →How it works
Step IPay the sources
The agent buys each paper it needs with an x402 nanopayment, settled on Arc in USDC — gas-free and sub-cent via Circle Gateway. A budget cap it can never exceed.
Step IIGround the answer
A Planner, parallel Readers and a Fact-checker reason over the papers. Proof-of-grounding commits a tamper-evident digest on-chain, so only authors whose work grounded the answer get paid.
Step IIIAuthors paid — then paid again
An Adjudicator agent decides how the payment splits across sources — and the total. Every citation pays its author a nanopayment; unclaimed shares sit in a USYC-style ERC-4626 vault until they claim with ORCID. When another agent cites Kuot, a fraction flows recursively back to the originals.
Why it's different
Recursive reverse-x402
Being cited earns money. When an agent grounds an answer in Kuot's work it pays Kuot, and a fraction flows back to the original authors — the citation graph pays itself, depth after depth.
Proof-of-grounding before pay
A keccak256 digest of the answer is committed on-chain. Only authors whose work actually grounded it are paid — closing the x402 pay-then-maybe-delivered gap.
Vault yield, real stakes
Unclaimed rewards sit in a USYC-style ERC-4626 vault until the author claims — the deposit/redeem path is real on-chain (a self-funded stand-in on testnet). Reputation is USDC posted as collateral (ERC-8004), slashable on a false citation — not a number you ask to be trusted.
Cite it. Pay it.
Every citation, a real payment.
Grant one scoped budget and let the agent research, cite, and pay the humans behind the work — on-chain, non-custodial. The papers, and the coins, are real.