Elijah Esin@Ludarep

AI agents are becoming economic actors — they call APIs, hire compute, purchase data feeds, and pay each other for services. But the infrastructure for agent-to-agent commerce doesn't exist yet. Gas fees on traditional L1s make sub-cent micropayments economically impossible, and there's no trust layer to distinguish legitimate agents from bad actors. TrustGate solves both problems. It combines onchain trust scoring with Circle Nanopayments on Arc to create a payment system where trust determines how money moves. Here's how it works: a depositor funds the TrustGate contract with USDC and sets spending allowances per agent. When an agent tries to claim payment, TrustGate queries its trust score directly from Arc RPC — no oracle, no manual input. The score is computed from real onchain activity: transaction history, USDC balance, contract interactions, and deployments. Based on the score, the payment is routed automatically. HIGH tier agents (75-97) get instant USDC settlement. MEDIUM tier (40-74) gets time-locked 24 hours. LOW tier (1-39) goes into escrow pending approval. Zero trust means blocked completely. The result is a self-regulating payment system. Good agents get paid faster. Bad actors get filtered out automatically. And because it runs on Arc with Circle Nanopayments, the cost per transaction is fractions of a cent — a 99.97% reduction versus standard L1 gas fees. TrustGate also exposes a public trust oracle API that any protocol on Arc can query using the x402 payment standard. One request, one sub-cent USDC payment, one trust score returned. It's composable trust infrastructure for the entire agentic economy. The project includes three verified Solidity contracts on Arc testnet, a full Next.js dashboard, a 56-agent payment simulator, live oracle API on a VPS, complete technical documentation, and 142 passing tests.

Build solutions that improve how software is built. Work with an AI that understands your codebase, helping you reduce repetitive work and build with real context. ⏳ Build your project in 48 hours. 🚀 Get hands-on with IBM Bob and explore how AI fits into real development workflows before it becomes standard. 💡 Build tools and workflows that developers would actually use. ⭐ Learn directly from experts throughout the event. 🤝 Join a team or build solo. 💰 Prize pool: $10,000 🧑🏻‍💻 Register before the Kick-Off Stream and start building with Bob.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc and Circle, developers will build the next generation of Agentic economic applications using Circle’s Nanopayments infrastructure with settlement on Arc in USDC. For the first time, high-frequency, usage-based transactions between users, APIs, and AI agents can operate without gas overhead eroding margin. Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable, dollar-denominated USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality — enabling real-time coordination and economically viable per-action pricing at scale. 📅 April 20 – 26, 2026 • Apr 20 – 25 (Online): Submit projects by Apr 25. • Apr 25 (On-site Build – SF, CA): Teams refine projects. • Apr 26 (On-site Demos & Awards – SF, CA): Live pitches & winners announced. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (April 25-26): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆 Compete for a $15,000+ Prize Pool. 📍 Please note: If approved for the on-site experience, you’ll also have the opportunity to showcase your project live. Travel and accommodation will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now – sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!