When AI agents trade, who pays whom — and who holds the keys?
Ciphering is building toward agent-to-agent trade execution on the x402 payment standard — the protocol behind 119M+ transactions on Base, governed by the x402 Foundation (Coinbase, Cloudflare, Google, Visa, AWS, Circle, Anthropic).
Our architecture: two rails, never confused
| Leg | Protocol | What moves |
|---|---|---|
| Agent ↔ Agent payments | x402 — HTTP 402 + USDC on Base (EIP-3009, gasless) | Fees for market data, quotes, risk checks, execution services |
| User → Agent authority | ERC-4337 smart accounts + session keys | Scoped, revocable permission to trade — hard caps, pair whitelist, expiry |
Most "AI trading" designs collapse these two into one — giving software blanket control of user funds. Ciphering keeps them separate by construction: payments flow over x402; execution authority is a bounded, on-chain-enforced grant that mirrors our Risk Gate ($2,500 max order · 75 bps slippage cap · $5,000 daily cap) and can be revoked instantly. The kill switch stays.
The roadmap
Sell intelligence
x402-gated agent API: live market data, DEX quotes, risk scoring — paid per call in USDC.
Paid preparation
Agents pay to receive fully prepared, unsigned trades. Humans still sign everything.
Scoped execution
Session-keyed smart accounts execute within user-set caps. Revocable. Audited. Kill-switched.
Agent marketplace
Cipher buys and sells agent services via x402 discovery — a true agent economy node.
Why x402, why now
x402 is an open standard with hosted facilitators (Coinbase Developer Platform) — payment verification and settlement without holding keys or running infrastructure. It is the missing economic layer for autonomous agents, and Ciphering's prepare-only agent architecture was built for exactly this moment.
Build the agent economy with us
We're raising interest for the x402 execution roadmap — from monetized agent intelligence to scoped autonomous trading.
Contact ceo@ciphering.io