Settlement layer for grounded AI answers

Citation settlement operations

Kleos Answer Settlement Network

Gateway online

Settlement workflow

Run settlement scenario

Ready to run the settlement scenario.

01

Inspect

Buyer agent ranks paid sources by relevance, trust, toll, reputation, and budget fit.

02

Buy

Read tolls unlock full content and create x402-style settlement plus split payouts.

03

Cite

Only cited sources get second-stage citation tolls and answer-linked receipts.

04

Reprice

Seller agent reprices from citation rate, confidence, paid reads, and skipped demand.

05

Reward

Sponsor pool pays extra only to cited sources that proved impact in the final answer.

Live proof

Gateway status

Gateway balance

0.5 testnet USDC

Live x402 receipt

0b795e06-3f01-4eff-b4f2-7fa9240781b1

Agent wallet

0x3a074d1050340eea8022df3359bc517431303e58

Testnet USDC moved

$0.0054

$0.0014 citation tolls+ funded

Answer settlements

1

100% read-to-citation conversionanswer-linked

Paid source reads

2

0 bought but not cited0% paid

Creators onboarded

4

0 creator-added sourcesroyalty graph

Buyer agent runs

1

7 priced sources indexedbudgeted

Impact pool

$0.0051

2 retroactive grantssponsor-backed

Operational evidence

System coverage

Live

Live Gateway verification, Circle CLI payment proof, answer-linked citation settlement, claim-level answer proofs, receipt verification, adversarial citation challenges, signed creator webhooks, creator cash-outs, source onboarding, RSS/Ghost import, publisher ownership verification, publisher kit, retroactive impact pool, and bonded A2A proof are implemented.

Primary lane

RFB 6 creator monetization

Supporting lanes

RFB 1, RFB 3, RFB 5

System map

What Kleos proves

Autonomous buyer and seller agents

Product surface

Strong

Buyer agent ranks sources by relevance, trust, price, budget remaining, and reputation discount, then separately finalizes which purchased sources deserve citation tolls; seller agent reprices from paid reads, skipped reads, citation rate, citation confidence, uncited purchases, and impact-pool outcomes; answer proofs expose claim-level covered, partial, and unsupported traces; verifier and challenge agents can audit receipts and release or risk the citation broker bond; CI checks economic invariants across budgets, splits, receipts, registry, vault, and A2A gates.

Next proof point: Keep collecting end-to-end agent runs and show read-to-citation conversion by task.

Public validation

Product surface

Strong

The app tracks paid reads, answer settlements, citation receipts, citation tolls, buyer-agent runs, USDC moved, creators paid, source catalog size, registered/RSS-imported sources, verified publishers, impact-pool grants, signed creator webhooks, creator cash-outs, receipt verifications, citation challenges, A2A proof events, and payout splits in the live ledger.

Next proof point: Public tester attestations are tracked through GitHub issues with role labels and proof hashes.

Circle / Arc payment rails

Product surface

Strong

Arc Testnet wallet is funded through Gateway; Charon returns x402 v2-style 402 challenges, base64 PAYMENT-REQUIRED headers, GatewayWalletBatched metadata, live BatchFacilitatorClient verification, read/citation toll payment records, and a successful Circle CLI paid request.

Next proof point: Show the existing stable-deployment Circle CLI receipt and Arcscan link in the demo.

Answer settlement design

Product surface

Strong

Combines two-stage creator citation tolls, answer-linked receipt hashes, claim-level proof traces, independent receipt verification, adversarial citation challenges, signed creator webhooks, creator cash-out aggregation, publisher ownership verification, dynamic value-of-information pricing, autonomous buyer budgets, collaborator royalties, MCP discovery, publisher manifests, retroactive impact rewards, no-wallet sponsored trials, public ops proof, treasury proof, OpenAPI discoverability, creator-scoped source registry, encrypted content vault, x402-priced A2A research, and a bonded ERC-8004-ready citation broker.

Next proof point: Use the demo to show emergent price movement after demand changes instead of presenting static paywall pricing.

Creator intake

Register paid source

Evidence layer

Citation and A2A proof

Citation receipts

Circle Gateway Nanopayments: why sub-cent agent payments work

$0.0014

Gateway batching makes sub-cent agent citation payments economically viable.

Kleos-curated memo: Circle Gateway is the economic reason an agent can pay a fraction of a cent for creator content.

answer 0x000000...7976ef - receipt 0x000000...f51878

read pay_seed...ateway - cite pay_seed...ateway - 94% confidence

Agent-to-agent proof

Shadow Float V2 sponsored spend intent

signed bound

Kleos signer authorized a bounded 0.01 USDC provider spend; Shadow Float bound it onchain with repayment pending until after review.

Amount

$0.010

Digest

0x385da6...ca452b

Buyer agent

Research run

Latest answer

Agent conclusion

Kleos settles grounded AI answers by charging buyer agents to inspect creator sources, charging citation tolls only when those sources appear in the final answer, splitting each toll to collaborators, and repricing future access from answer impact.

Budget

$0.018

Spent

$0.0054

Answer settlement

Read tolls vs citation tolls

Read tolls paid

$0.0040

Citation tolls paid

$0.0014

Cited sources

1

Bought not cited

1

Bonded broker

Capital-at-risk citation proof

Evaluator bond is released; answer 0x000000...7976ef cited 1 source and left 1 purchased source uncited.

Broker bond

$0.0025

Receipt hash

0x000000...56f3a4

Impact pool

Retroactive source rewards

Sponsor capital is allocated after citation receipts prove which sources actually supported the answer, creating a second creator reward beyond the read and citation tolls.

Impact pool settled

$0.0051

Sources rewarded

1

Catalog

Priced sources

SourceRead tollCitation tollRangeSplitLink

ERC-8004: reputation hooks for agent-to-agent markets

The draft trustless-agent standard Kleos can map to for portable buyer and seller reputation.

erc-8004reputationagent-to-agent
$0.0070$0.0025$0.0020 - $0.0353 collaborators

x402: the HTTP negotiation layer for Charon tolls

Circle's x402 explainer is the clearest source for Kleos's 402 challenge, PAYMENT-SIGNATURE retry, and PAYMENT-RESPONSE receipt.

x402httppayment-signature
$0.0060$0.0021$0.0020 - $0.0302 collaborators

Arc Nanopayments reference app: buyer agent plus seller endpoints

The most important sample repo for Kleos: a working buyer agent, x402-protected seller endpoints, Gateway batching, and seller dashboard patterns.

reference-applangchaingateway
$0.0055$0.0019$0.0010 - $0.0223 collaborators

Circle Gateway Nanopayments: why sub-cent agent payments work

The core Circle source explaining gas-free USDC nanopayments, Gateway batching, and the buyer-seller flow Kleos builds on.

circlegatewaynanopayments
$0.0040$0.0014$0.0010 - $0.0253 collaborators

ARC CLI: project tracking and Arc builder context

The Canteen CLI source that helps builders log product and traction updates and pull Arc/Circle context into agent workflows.

arc-clicanteentraction
$0.0036$0.0012$0.0010 - $0.0203 collaborators

RSSHub: the machine-readable chokepoint for creator feeds

RSSHub is the practical ingestion surface for Kleos because it turns many independent sites into consistent agent-readable feeds.

rssrsshubcreator
$0.0032$0.0011$0.0010 - $0.0182 collaborators

Canteen distribution bootstrap: start where audiences already are

The strategic source behind Kleos's RSS/articles-first distribution plan and traction story.

distributiontractioncreator
$0.0028$0.0010$0.0010 - $0.0202 collaborators

Seller agent

Price movement

Circle Gateway Nanopayments: why sub-cent agent payments work

$0.0040

RSSHub: the machine-readable chokepoint for creator feeds

$0.0032

x402: the HTTP negotiation layer for Charon tolls

$0.0060

Arc Nanopayments reference app: buyer agent plus seller endpoints

$0.0055

ERC-8004: reputation hooks for agent-to-agent markets

$0.0070

Canteen distribution bootstrap: start where audiences already are

$0.0028

ARC CLI: project tracking and Arc builder context

$0.0036

Buyer decisions

Paid vs skipped

DecisionSourceTollRelevance
Awaiting the next buyer-agent run.

Payment ledger

x402 settlements

Gateway

Arc proof

Gateway balance

0.5 testnet USDC

Live paid request

$0.0040 GatewayWalletBatched

Agent wallet

0x3a074d1050340eea8022df3359bc517431303e58

Live x402 payer

0x44557bc24c1c475b7b251c3fa8efae7527d96bf7

Royalty graph

Collaborator payouts

Pricing events

Seller-agent log

x402: the HTTP negotiation layer for Charon tolls

$0.0050 -> $0.0060 - Seeded demand signal: pricing-agent article converted during setup.

MCP catalog

Agent interface

list_paid_sources

Enumerate priced source previews

quote_source

Return current x402 toll and split graph

buy_source

Unlock a source through payment proof

finalize_answer_citations

Settle citation tolls for cited paid sources

list_citation_receipts

Inspect answer hashes and support spans

settle_impact_pool

Allocate sponsor rewards to proven cited sources

get_publisher_kit

Return RSS/Ghost publisher integration manifest

summarize_purchases

Explain paid and skipped choices