x402 economy

ADapptive sells fast, trusted human judgment and pays the humans who provide it. x402 — the HTTP-native payment protocol stewarded by the x402 Foundation — is the rail for both sides because it is machine-payable (agents can buy without accounts), settles in stablecoins in seconds, supports per-request recipients, and comes with a discovery layer (Bazaar) that lets agents find payable endpoints.

This document is the design and the rollout plan. Points remain non-monetary until a campaign has a funded budget; nothing here changes that until the stated gates are passed.

Model

Developer or agent ──pay-in──► RewardBudget (per campaign)
                                    │  PayoutPolicy converts outcomes to credits
Tester contribution ──cleared──► RewardLedger (+points) ──► credits
                     ──deployed──► RewardLedger (+points) ──► credits
                     ──confirmed─► RewardLedger (+points) ──► credits
credits ──eligible tier + verified wallet──► Payout (x402 dynamic payTo) ──► tester wallet

Data model (additive)

Credits are derived: credits = Σ policy rate × ledger events bounded by the budget's remaining funds; the ledger already exists (RewardLedger).

Pay-in (agents and developers buy feedback)

Endpoints under /x402/ (feature flag X402_ENABLED):

Handshake (x402 V2):

1. Unpaid request → 402 with PAYMENT-REQUIRED header: base64 JSON { x402Version: 2, accepts: [{ scheme: "exact", network: "eip155:8453", asset: <USDC>, amount, payTo: <platform treasury>, maxTimeoutSeconds, extra }], resource: { url, description, mimeType }, extensions: { bazaar: { ... input schema, output schema ... } } }.
2. Client pays and retries with PAYMENT-SIGNATURE (base64 payload).
3. Server calls the facilitator /verify, fulfils the request, then /settle; response carries PAYMENT-RESPONSE.

Implementation: platform/backend/api/src/lib/x402/ (requirements builder, header codec, facilitator client, Fastify hook) with a mocked facilitator in tests. Configuration: X402_FACILITATOR_URL, X402_PAY_TO, X402_NETWORK, X402_ASSET, X402_PRICES_JSON.

Bazaar: the extensions.bazaar block in the 402 body is what facilitators index, so agents can find "human feedback on a URL" by natural-language query and pay for it without an account.

Pay-out (testers get paid)

• Eligibility: tier weight ≥ policy minTierWeight, TesterWallet verified by signature, account older than 30 days, no BLOCKED submissions in the last 90 days, anti-sybil score above threshold.
• Trigger: operator- or schedule-run POST /api/platform-admin/payouts/run batches eligible credits per tester into a Payout.
• Settlement: x402 dynamic payTo to the tester's wallet through the facilitator; txHash recorded; failures retried with backoff; reversals are compensating ledger entries, never deletions.
• Fiat option: facilitators that bridge to fiat rails can be added without changing the model.

Gate: legal and tax review before X402_PAYOUTS_ENABLED=true (money transmission, KYC thresholds, 1099/DAC7 reporting). Until then payouts are computed and displayed as "pending eligibility".

Mechanisms to test with real data

Guardrails

• No custody of tester funds; settlement at payout time.
• Every payout idempotent (unique per ledger entry set), audited, reversible by compensating entry.
• Budgets can never go negative; reservations are made when an item flips to THRESHOLD_MET and released on REJECTED.
• Public copy (/pricing, /terms) keeps saying points are not money until the first funded campaign.

Rollout