Shielded NanopaymentsFor Autonomous AI Agents
When autonomous AI agents pay for inference or data using public blockchain transactions, their wallet permanently logs every model call and trade secret. ArcNano is building private, compliant, sub-cent micropayments via native HTTP 402 on the Arc Network.
Agent commits fixed-tier USDC notes into a Poseidon Merkle tree on Arc, creating a uniform anonymity set.
Agent queries an AI inference API and receives an automated HTTP 402 challenge with root parameters.
Agent proves note membership and ASP non-sanctioned compliance off-chain in memory without signing a tx.
Gateway verifies instantly and settles aggregated batches on Arc using Circle Gas Station sponsorship.
msg.sender linkability is mathematically eliminated.What Is ArcNano?
ArcNano is an open-source zero-knowledge payment protocol engineered for the Arc Ecosystem, designed to enable true private machine-to-machine commerce.
Zero-Knowledge for Agents
Cryptographic payment infrastructure specifically designed for machine-to-machine interactions. Autonomous software agents and LLMs require private payments that do not dox their operational logic, prompt pipelines, or trading intelligence.
Native Web Standard (x402)
Instead of requiring manual wallet popups or custom RPC bridges, payments occur naturally over the Internet's standard HTTP 402 Payment Required protocol via standard HTTP request/response headers.
Purpose-Built for Arc
Leveraging Arc's native Circle Gas Station (ERC-4337 Paymaster) and native USDC. Receiver-sponsored gas eliminates the need for agents to hold native gas tokens, preventing the gas-funding paper trail that destroys privacy.
Why Existing Machine Payments Fail for AI Agents
Paying for autonomous compute and LLM tools with public blockchain transactions creates 4 fatal traps.
Public Ledgers Dox Your AI Agents
Standard crypto payments permanently log every prompt, tool call, and model supplier to block explorers for competitors to copy.
Naive ZK Still Leaks The Signer
Even with a ZK proof, if the agent signs the transaction on-chain, its wallet address is broadcast to every node in the network.
Mixers Are Blocked By Enterprise APIs
Traditional mixers pool dirty and clean funds together, causing AI gateways, AWS, and Cloudflare to automatically blacklist them.
Block Times & Gas Kill Nanopayments
Waiting 10–15 seconds for a block stalls real-time agent loops, while gas fees cost 10x more than a $0.001 inference call.
How ArcNano Solves Every Trap
We architected ArcNano from first principles to decouple payments from identity, guarantee legal compliance, and deliver instant sub-second verification.
Receiver-Batched Settlement
In ArcNano, the spending agent never broadcasts an on-chain transaction. Instead, it generates a Groth16 proof locally in memory and embeds it in the HTTP 402 request header.
The client proves knowledge of a secret deposit note commitment without disclosing its nullifier or secret key to the wire.
The API receiver collects valid proofs from multiple agents and aggregates them into a single batchSpend() transaction broadcasted on Arc.
Because the receiver is the transaction signer and msg.sender, the payer's wallet address never touches the Arc mempool or blockchain ledger.
Arc Circle Gas Station Sponsorship
Normally, funding burner wallets with native gas tokens links them back to a master exchange account. ArcNano eliminates native gas through Circle Gas Station paymasters.
Settlement transactions on Arc are submitted via the Circle Gas Station (ERC-4337 Paymaster).
Settlement gas is fully sponsored or deducted from off-chain USDC fee allowances. Agents only manage confidential cryptographic commitments.
No native gas tokens are ever transferred to agent wallets, permanently closing the centralized exchange funding graph leak.
Association Set Provider (ASP) Proofs
Inspired by the Privacy Pools standard, ArcNano uses dual Merkle membership circuits so legitimate agents prove clean origin without revealing their individual deposit leaf.
Every Circom spend circuit enforces dual constraints: inclusion in the verified deposit Merkle tree, plus non-inclusion in the ASP sanctioned root.
The agent mathematically proves: 'My deposit is authentic AND is not part of any OFAC/illicit cluster.'
Enterprise APIs verify compliance with mathematical certainty before fulfilling requests, remaining 100% compliant with global regulations.
Two-Stage HTTP 402 Verification
We decouple high-frequency API responses from on-chain block mining times through an in-memory two-stage verification architecture.
Stage 1 (Off-Chain Verification): The gateway executes an in-memory Groth16 pairing check and consults a Redis nullifier cache in under 10ms, instantly serving the LLM response.
Stage 2 (On-Chain Settlement): The gateway queues spent nullifiers and settles 50–100 transactions together in periodic batches on Arc.
This reduces per-query settlement overhead to fractions of a cent while enabling high-throughput autonomous agent loops.
Development Roadmap
We believe in total transparency. Here is our honest, step-by-step progress from architectural design to live testnet deployment on Arc.
System Architecture & Protocol Specification Formulation
Designed the two-stage HTTP 402 verification model, solved the msg.sender leakage via receiver-batched settlement, and authored the foundational protocol specification for the Arc ecosystem.
Circom Circuits & Arc Testnet Smart Contracts
Finalizing the 20-level Poseidon Merkle tree inclusion circuit (spend.circom), implementing Association Set non-membership constraints (asp_check.circom), and preparing ArcShieldPool.sol for deployment on Arc Testnet.
Autonomous Agent SDK & Gateway Middleware
Building client libraries for autonomous AI frameworks (LangChain, AutoGPT, CrewAI) and drop-in Express/Fastify HTTP 402 middleware for API providers to verify ZK proofs in single-digit milliseconds.
Circle Gas Station Relayer & AI Pilot on Arc
Production integration with Arc's Circle Gas Station Paymaster for zero-gas settlement, followed by a live testnet pilot connecting autonomous AI agents to live inference providers.
Follow the Development of ArcNano
As circuits, testnet contracts, and the agent client library are committed, all code is published openly on GitHub under the MIT License.