Agentic Economy on Arc · Agent-to-Agent Payment Loop

Every AI agent payment,
governed.

The governance layer for autonomous agent payments on Circle Nanopayments. Identity, policy, anomaly, intent, and audit — all on Arc. Three lines of SDK code.

$0.0001
per governance check
6
agents in the live economy
50ms
kill switch response time
100%
decisions written on-chain
The pipeline

Six layers between the agent and the money.

Each payment runs through every check, cheapest-first. If any layer blocks, USDC never leaves. If approved, the decision settles on Arc and an audit receipt is written to chain.

layer 0

Kill switch

Operator can pause any agent's wallet instantly; in-flight payments bounce.

layer 1

ERC-8004 identity

Every sender and recipient is verified against the on-chain IdentityRegistry.

layer 2

Policy

YAML-defined rules: spend caps, allowlists, approval flows, per-recipient limits.

layer 3

Anomaly

Z-score vs. the agent's historical baseline. First-time recipients flagged.

layer 4

Intent (Claude Haiku 4.5)

Semantic analysis of the payment intent. Catches prompt injection in English.

layer 5

On-chain audit receipt

Every decision written to Arc as a nanopayment memo. Non-repudiable.

Architecture

Where AgentGuard sits.

We're a thin layer the agent calls instead of Circle directly. Operator policies and on-chain identity gate every payment before any USDC moves. Same SDK on every framework.

Layer 1 · control plane

Agent operators

CFOs, security teams, platform engineers

Write YAML policy
Hold kill-switch keys
Monitor incidents
defines policy · holds operator keys
Layer 2 · agent runtime

Autonomous AI agents

Claude Agent SDK · LangChain · AutoGen · CrewAI · custom

research-agent
data-vendor
inference-agent
sms-agent
guard.pay(...) · 3 lines of SDK code
AgentGuard · governance pipeline

Every payment runs five layers in sequence.

The operator's policy + on-chain identity + statistical baselines + Claude's read of the agent's intent — all evaluated synchronously before the wallet ever signs.

Kill switch
ERC-8004 identity
Policy
Anomaly
Intent (Claude)
Approved
Settle as USDC nanopayment on Arc + write audit receipt
Blocked / escalated
Refuse settlement + write incident audit receipt to Arc
settle on Arc · USDC nanopayment + audit receipt
Layer 3 · payment rail

Circle Nanopayments

Developer-Controlled Wallets · Gateway · x402

EIP-712 sigs
Gateway batching
Sub-cent USDC
batched settlement · gas-free
Layer 4 · settlement & audit

Arc Testnet

USDC as native gas · sub-second finality · public block explorer

On-chain settlement
Audit receipts
Public verification
Integration

Three lines.
Every framework.

Point your agent at AgentGuard instead of Circle. We run governance, forward the approved call, return the receipt. No wallet re-custody, no change to your agent framework.

Claude Agent SDKLangChainAutoGenCrewAIMastra
$ pip install agentguard-protocol
research_agent.py
from agentguard import AgentGuard

guard = AgentGuard(
    agent_id="research-agent-v1",
    policy_file="policies/research.yaml",
    circle_wallet_id="...",
)

# every payment passes through 6 checks
receipt = guard.pay(
    to_agent_id="data-vendor-agent-v1",
    amount_usdc=0.001,
    intent="Buy Q3 macro stats report",
)

if not receipt.approved:
    print(f"blocked: {receipt.reason}")
policies/research-agent-v1.yaml
agent_id: research-agent-v1
owner_wallet: 0xAcmeCorp

spending_limits:
  per_transaction: 5
  per_day: 50
  per_recipient_per_day: 10

recipient_policy:
  type: allowlist
  approved_recipients:
    - data-vendor-agent-v1
    - inference-agent-v1
    - sms-agent-v1
  fallback_action: block

intent_verification:
  enabled: true
  sensitivity: high

approval_rules:
  - if: transaction_amount > 2
    then: require_human_approval

kill_switch:
  enabled: true
  authorized_pausers:
    - 0xOperator
Policy as code

Operators write YAML.
The rail enforces it.

Every spend cap, allowlist, approval flow, and category filter lives in version-controlled YAML — reviewed in pull requests, deployed atomically, enforced on every payment. Audit log on Arc is automatic; no SDK code change for new rules.

5
deterministic policy primitives
<5ms
policy evaluation latency
git-native
versioned, reviewable, rollbackable
on-chain
every decision logged to Arc
Why nanopayments

Only economically viable on Circle Nanopayments.

At $0.30 per Stripe transaction, charging $0.0001 per governance check is physically impossible. On Circle Nanopayments + Arc, it's routine — a busy agent pays us a few dollars a day, we settle every decision on chain.

Stripe
$1,500,000 / day
impossible
Circle Nanopayments
$0 / day fees
native

Every payment. Every agent. Governed.

Three lines of SDK. Real Circle Nanopayments on Arc. Identity, policy, anomaly, and Claude Haiku 4.5 intent classification — all on chain.