AgentSourcing: Autonomous AI Research Network

AgentSourcing is a multi-agent research network built on the Arc blockchain, powered by Circle Programmable Wallets and Nanopayments. A user submits a research task with a small USDC deposit. A Manager Agent — powered by LLaMA 3.1 70B via Featherless AI — decomposes the task into specialized sub-tasks and autonomously hires 6 Specialist Agents. Each specialist is paid $0.002 USDC per task. These specialists, in turn, purchase premium data from external APIs using the x402 payment standard at $0.0005 per call. The entire pipeline — from task intake to final report delivery — generates approximately 50 on-chain USDC transactions per run, all verifiable on the Arc Testnet Block Explorer. On-Chain Trust Layer: Every agent maintains a reputation score tracked by a custom ERC-8004 smart contract written in Vyper and deployed on Arc Testnet. The Manager uses these scores to select the best available specialist for each task. Why this is impossible without Arc: On Ethereum, each micro-payment of $0.002 would incur $2+ in gas fees — a 100,000% overhead. On Polygon or L2s, gas still ranges from $0.01 to $0.05, making sub-cent payments unprofitable. Arc's USDC-denominated gas makes this model economically viable for the first time. Tech Stack: Arc Testnet (settlement), Circle Programmable Wallets (agent treasury), Circle Nanopayments + x402 (per-API monetization), Featherless AI (LLaMA 3.1 70B Manager + Qwen/DeepSeek/Mistral Specialists), ERC-8004 Vyper Smart Contract (reputation), FastAPI backend, React + TypeScript frontend.