Keryx 🏛️

Every time an AI uses a creator's work as a source, the creator gets paid — instantly.

🔗 Live: keryx.cc  ·  ▶️ npm run demo — the whole loop in ~90s  ·  🧩 Fork the Arc primitives

Fork-and-run. Keryx is a live app and a set of MIT-licensed, standalone Arc primitives you can import: two-toll x402 settlement (fixed + dynamic), a squat-proof on-chain creator/attribution registry (multi-author splits + indexer), and a server-enforced spend cap for non-custodial agent spend. One command — npm run demo — runs the full cycle end-to-end in ~90s with real Arc-testnet settlement and prints on-chain proof.

Keryx is a citation-toll reading agent. Ask it a question with a budget. It autonomously decides which paid content sources are worth buying, pays for them per-request over x402, reads enough to answer, writes a grounded answer with citations, and then settles a weighted nanopayment to every source it actually cited — in USDC on Arc. Sources that contributed more earn more; multi-author works split the reward automatically.

Built for the Lepton Agents Hackathon (Canteen × Circle, on Arc) — the primary RFB 6: Creator & Publisher Monetization track. The org's own Prior Art #1 is the "Herald model (kēryx/praeco): content cited, paid per citation" — Keryx (κῆρυξ = herald) is the canonical build for it. The differentiator: visible agency — every buy / skip / cache / stop decision is model-reasoned with a human-readable rationale, streamed live to the UI.

Milestones — what's live

• ✅ Live app at keryx.cc — free to try, no wallet, no sign-up · public /status + /api/health
• ✅ On the official MCP registry — npx -y keryx-mcp@latest adds Keryx to any MCP agent in one line
• ✅ Real on-chain settlement on Arc testnet — weighted per-citation USDC rewards, 100% to creator wallets (0% platform fee)
• ✅ On-chain SourceRegistry deployed (0x2e12Fa…) — squat-proof creator/attribution registry with multi-author splits
• ✅ Non-custodial spend — user-funded session EOA; the funded amount is the hard cap, Keryx never holds the key or the funds
• ✅ Real publisher feeds onboarded — Hugging Face, Vitalik Buterin, CoinDesk, Latent Space, Simon Willison … each earning per citation
• ✅ First owner-verified creator (conzit.com) — set its own payout wallet, cited & paid end-to-end
• ✅ Notify-on-citation webhooks — a signed POST fires the instant a source is cited & paid
• ✅ Forkable MIT Arc primitives — two-toll x402 settlement, on-chain registry + indexer, non-custodial spend cap

By the numbers — Arc testnet · snapshot 2026-07-02 · live at /status: 2,647 on-chain nanopayments settled · $13.63 USDC to 20 creator wallets (100%, 0% platform fee) · 603 autonomous agent runs · 98.5% reader→payer conversion.

Why this matters

The web's economic model breaks when the reader is an AI: agents consume creators' work without ever sending a click, a view, or a cent. Keryx closes that loop. It makes citation a payment event: the moment an agent relies on your writing to answer a question, you're paid — proportional to how much you helped — settled sub-cent over Circle's nanopayment rail. Creators onboard in one click (paste an RSS feed). Agents pay automatically. No accounts, no invoices, no clicks.

How the agent decides (the 30%)

The agent genuinely decides — it does not just automate. For one question it runs:

1. DECOMPOSE   break the question into atomic sub-claims
2. DISCOVER    match candidate sources from the registry (free previews)
3. DECIDE      per source: BUY / SKIP / CACHE — weighing expected value vs price vs budget,
               avoiding redundancy, preferring cheaper-sufficient sources   ← logged rationale
4. FETCH       pay the x402 toll only for BUY; reuse CACHE for free
5. SUFFICIENCY after each read, decide "have I read enough?" → stop early to save budget
6. SYNTHESIZE  a grounded answer with inline [S#] citations
7. ATTRIBUTE   assign each cited source a contribution weight (0..1)
8. SETTLE      weighted citation reward → each creator wallet (split across authors)

Money safety is enforced in code, not by the model: the LLM proposes value; the orchestrator enforces the hard budget cap, so a hallucinated number can never overspend.

Example trace (real output):

[decide]  BUY Agent Economy Weekly — strong match on x402, autonomous, commerce; worth the $0.004 toll
[decide]  SKIP Garden & Soil Monthly — weak match (no key terms); not worth $0.002
[fetch]   Paid $0.004 to Agent Economy Weekly — S1
[sufficiency] Read 2 sources covering all sub-claims; stopping early to save budget
[settle]  Settled $0.015 → Mara Okoye · $0.010 → Devin Park   (60/40 author split)
📊 $0.032 spent → 100% to creators · 3 bought / 3 skipped

Architecture

BROWSER (Web App)                    IPFS + Arc Smart Contracts              Circle Gateway + Arc Testnet
─────────────────                    ─────────────────────────               ──────────────────────────────
┌──────────────────┐                 [SourceRegistry]                         
│ /ask page        │ (SIWE           on Arc 0x2e12Fa...                       USDC on Arc
│ + wallet connect │  auth)           • sources[]                             (ERC-20, 6 decimals)
│                  │                   • emit Registry events                  
└────────┬─────────┘                   • indexed by off-chain DB               
         │ session-grant                                                       
         │ (user funds session EOA)     [IPFS Content]                         
         │ MetaMask tx → session       • AES-256-GCM encrypted                [Circle Gateway]
         │ deposits in Gateway          • plaintext released only post-settle  • batch settlement
         │                                                                      • x402 EIP-712 verify
         │                             [Keryx API]                             
         │ co-sign loop (fetch+POST):  • auth: SIWE JWT (browser + API key)   [Arc RPC]
    /api/ask (SSE) ──────────────────▶ /api/session/*   (grant, credit)       rpc.testnet.arc.network
    browser streams                     /api/ask         (agent asks, gets
    sign-requests                       /api/ask/sign    sign-requests back)
    ◀────────────────────────────────  /api/source/[id] (fetch toll + IPFS key)
    client-side session key             /api/cite        (citation reward)
    signs EIP-712                       /api/keys        (API key mint/verify)
    auto-signs (NO prompt)              /api/docs        (OpenAPI)
                                        /api/faucet      (testnet drip)
    
    Agent brain (lib/agent/run-agent.ts):
    decompose→discover→decide→fetch→sufficiency→synthesize→attribute→settle
    (same as v0.1, reads via stable KeryxDB interface)

Key Innovation: Non-custodial spend. The user funds a session EOA from their MetaMask (once), deposits it into Circle Gateway, and the browser auto-signs each x402 authorization with the in-tab session key. The funded amount is the hard cap; Keryx never touches the user's key or funds.

Circle / Arc / Web3 primitives used (the 30%)

• x402 pay-per-request — @circle-fin/x402-batching. Sellers wrap content with a 402 challenge (lib/x402-server.ts); the agent pays inline via GatewayClient.pay() (server path) or browser co-signs via BrowserCoSignGateway (user interactive path).
• Circle Gateway / Nanopayments — sub-cent batched settlement (the $0.000001 floor) for both the fetch toll and the weighted citation reward. User-funded session EOA deposits into Gateway; server verifies EIP-712 authorization signatures from the browser.
• SIWE (Sign-In-With-Ethereum) — siwe@3.0 + wagmi@3 for wallet connect + nonce/message/verify flow. Role = creator (on-chain SourceRegistry) / dev (env allowlist) / asker (default). Stateless JWT session.
• Smart Contracts — SourceRegistry.sol deployed on Arc testnet (0x2e12Fa3256B21b9d8726933b5c4bfBDCc740e536). Tracks sources by URL hash, creator, splits, and IPFS CID; on-chain events drive the indexer cache.
• IPFS + Pinata — content encrypted server-side (AES-256-GCM), plaintext released client-side only after x402 settle (via produce() callback). Decryption key held by server (Lit Protocol upgrade path post-hackathon).
• USDC on Arc — native settlement currency (ERC-20, 6 decimals); Arc uses USDC as its gas token too. Native USDC (18 decimals) = gas. Public testnet faucet.
• Circle CLI (circle) — gateway, services, and feedback commands; arc-canteen for traction.

Innovation & Design Choices (Phases 01–06)

• Non-custodial browser co-sign — user funds a session EOA (one MetaMask tx), deposits into Gateway, browser holds session key in tab memory and auto-signs each x402 authorization (EIP-712). Keryx never holds the key or funds. Funded cap is the enforced spend ceiling (Phase 03, commits 661452e, 15fcff2).
• On-chain SourceRegistry — deployed on Arc (0x2e12Fa3256B21b9d8726933b5c4bfBDCc740e536). Creator writes source metadata + IPFS CID; indexer polls events + caches in DB. URL squatting resistance via creator-scoped source IDs; multi-author splits on-chain (Phase 02, commit 46df551).
• Encrypted IPFS content, payment-gated decryption — content encrypted server-side (AES-256-GCM), ciphertext pinned to IPFS, plaintext released ONLY inside the x402 produce() callback after settlement verify (Phase 04, commit d2b8eb1). Free preview available plaintext.
• Public API + wallet-issued keys — both x402 pay-per-call AND stateless API keys (SHA-256 hashed, mint-once-show-once). Rate limited per key. OpenAPI docs at /api/docs (Phase 05, commit 3a3a4a1).
• SIWE 3-role auth — wallet-based identity, role resolved live from on-chain/DB state + env allowlist. Stateless JWT. No server accounts (Phase 01, commit 7c834a0).
• Testnet faucet — native USDC drip for session setup gas (Phase 06 connect UX, commit ca2b6f7).
• Open-marketplace discovery — agent probes Circle's live x402 service bazaar per query; evaluates but never purchases from other chains (Arc is the rail). Real third-party endpoints visible in reasoning.
• Per-citation settlement weighted by contribution — not flat per-fetch; the answer's grounding determines the split.
• Multi-author splits — one reward fans out across author wallets by configured weights (on-chain).
• Emergent budget behavior — the agent stops early, caches, and skips, producing genuine frugality.
• Two-tier economy — a small access toll + a weighted citation pool, so fetched-but-uncited sources earn only the toll while cited sources earn proportionally more.

Run it

One command — the full cycle (~90s). Decide → pay x402 toll → read → synthesize → settle weighted citation rewards, then print the Arc-testnet wallet addresses whose USDC actually moved:

npm run demo -- "How do x402 and stablecoins enable AI agent commerce?" --budget 0.05

With ANTHROPIC_API_KEY + AGENT_FUNDER_PRIVATE_KEY + NEXT_PUBLIC_KERYX_REGISTRY_ADDRESS it settles for real and prints on-chain proof links; without them the same flow runs offline, clearly labeled SIMULATED (a mock is never presented as settled). Full setup below.

# 1. Install (Node v20.18.2+)
npm install

# 2. Configure (optional — runs offline heuristic with zero keys)
cp .env.example .env.local
#   Minimal for offline dev: none (heuristic reasoning, simulated payments, local SQLite)
#   For real Arc testnet: add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY + NEXT_PUBLIC_KERYX_REGISTRY_ADDRESS
#   For user session support: add JWT_SECRET, CONTENT_MASTER_KEY, PINATA_JWT
#   For on-chain registry indexing: add KERYX_REGISTRY_ADDRESS, KERYX_REGISTRY_DEPLOY_BLOCK

# 3. Generate wallets (optional, for server-side treasury)
npm run generate-wallets

# 4. Seed demo sources (populates local DB)
npm run seed-sources

# 5a. Run the agent on one question (prints the full reasoning trace)
npm run ask -- "How do x402 and stablecoins enable autonomous AI agent commerce?" --budget 0.05

# 5b. Or run the web app (with SIWE auth, session grants, browser co-sign)
npm run dev          # http://localhost:3939

# 6. Generate autonomous payment volume (server-side, uses treasury)
npm run seed -- --count 20

# 7. See live metrics / traction
npm run metrics

# 8. Deploy to VPS (requires SSH key, pulls latest main)
npm run deploy

First-time user flow:

1. Open http://localhost:3939 (or keryx.cc)
2. Click "Connect Wallet" → MetaMask on Arc testnet
3. If low on USDC, hit /faucet → drip 20 USDC (2h cooldown)
4. Fund a session (or use in-app faucet integration)
5. Ask a question + set budget
6. Watch the agent decide, fetch, synthesize, settle — live in the UI

Operation Modes

Offline (default): KERYX_FORCE_OFFLINE=1 or missing LLM key / no registry address. Agent uses heuristic reasoning, sources from local SQLite, no wallet needed.

Live testnet: Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY + NEXT_PUBLIC_KERYX_REGISTRY_ADDRESS. User connects MetaMask, funds a session, browser co-signs. Server can also run volume engine with AGENT_FUNDER_PRIVATE_KEY (treasury).

To activate on-chain registry indexing: Set KERYX_REGISTRY_ADDRESS + KERYX_REGISTRY_DEPLOY_BLOCK. Indexer will poll Arc RPC and cache events in DB.

Deploy

Production: VPS at keryx.cc. SQLite is kept on-disk for real traction data; the indexer backfills SourceRegistry events from the deploy block on startup; traction metrics update live.

• npm run redeploy — low-downtime code deploy (default for code changes). Compiles the new release into a temp dir while the live build keeps serving, atomically swaps it in, pm2 reloads (~2s), then health-gates /api/health and auto-rolls-back if the new build doesn't come up. A failed/OOM compile never touches the live build, so keryx.cc stays up.
• npm run deploy — full provision + in-place build (first-time setup or dependency changes).
• Health & uptime: /api/health (liveness + readiness JSON) and a public /status page (uptime, deployed commit, settlement mode, live traction).

Local tunnel: npm run tunnel (Cloudflare Tunnel) — exposes localhost:3939 at a public URL, useful for testing the full flow locally without a VPS.

Always-on serverless: Supabase + Vercel adapters included; set NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL + SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY to use Postgres instead of SQLite. But local VPS/tunnel is preferred to keep traction data on the team's own infra.

Transparency & Honest Trade-offs

The dApp is non-custodial but makes 4 documented trade-offs (required for testnet, flagged for post-hackathon):

1. Circle facilitator — x402 settlement goes through Circle's BatchFacilitatorClient (no on-chain alternative on Arc testnet)
2. Server holds IPFS key — content is encrypted on IPFS but server holds the decryption key (Lit Protocol upgrade once Arc is on Lit)
3. Session key XSS surface — browser session key lives in sessionStorage (cap-bounded; Web Crypto non-exportable keys are post-hackathon)
4. Treasury gas wallet — server funder wallet can be drained if compromised (holds gas only, no USDC; rotated regularly)

See docs/security-threat-model.md for full verification matrix, residuals, and mitigations.

Forkable primitives (Arc OSS)

The reusable, standalone building blocks live in the arc-primitives/ submodule (keryx-arc-primitives, MIT) — two-toll x402 settlement, the on-chain SourceRegistry + indexer, and non-custodial browser co-sign spend caps, packaged to fork and import. Clone with git clone --recurse-submodules, or git submodule update --init.

Project docs

• PLAN.md — phased build plan & dApp evolution status
• DECISIONS.md — architecture decision log (link to Phase 01–06 decision log)
• DEMO.md — sub-3-minute demo script (updated for dApp flow: connect → fund → ask → settle)
• TRACTION.md — real payment volume + sources (updated weekly)
• FEEDBACK.md — Circle/Arc dev-tool feedback + tickets
• CLAUDE.md — orientation for contributors (rules, file ownership, dev setup)
• docs/system-architecture.md — dApp data/money flow diagrams + on-chain component details
• docs/security-threat-model.md — threat matrix, audit results, residual risks
• docs/codebase-summary.md — module map + file purposes

Stack

Next.js 16 · React 19 · Tailwind 4 · shadcn/ui · @circle-fin/x402-batching · viem · Node node:sqlite / Supabase · Anthropic / DeepSeek.

Built on the verified circlefin/arc-nanopayments x402/Gateway plumbing.