Karen Sheng@karen_sheng538

AIsaEscrow is a payment solution designed for pay-per-usage applications, positioned as an alternative to fiat and x402 payments. Our key differentiator is AIsa AI Marketplace, a fully production-ready SaaS platform that delivers a unified API across LLM inference, search, and vertical-specific data sources. Live since late last year, the platform enables us to experiment with and deploy novel payment primitives in real production environments from Day One. Traditional payment rails struggle with high-frequency, low-value transactions due to fees, chargeback risk, and reconciliation overhead. We also see strong demand from our users - primarily developers - for stablecoin payments. In practice, traditional payment fees of 2.9% + $0.30 significantly erode margins, making any top-up below $5 economically non-viable. An on-chain escrow model addresses these constraints by separating funding from consumption: users pre-fund an account, usage accrues as high-frequency microcharges, and balances are reconciled through automated settlement and debits. Users top up their accounts by depositing USDC into an escrow smart contract, with each escrowed balance mapped to a corresponding user ID in the AIsa AI Marketplace. Usage-based microcharges—often fractions of a cent per API call—are recorded in real time within a billing database. Settlement and disbursement operate on a 24-hour cadence. During each settlement window, total usage per user is aggregated, verified, and signed by a designated settler wallet. The verified charges are then deducted from each user’s escrowed balance accordingly.

In this hybrid hackathon powered by Arc, developers will build the next generation of agentic commerce systems using Arc with USDC. Explore a world where AI agents and web services can pay for APIs, data, compute, and content in dynamic, usage-based ways, while Arc provides stablecoin-native settlement with predictable USDC fees and deterministic, sub-second finality. This hackathon is supported by Google & Google DeepMind, with a dedicated challenge and $40,000 in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) credits awarded for the best use of Gemini models and Google AI Studio. 📅 January 9 – 24, 2026 • Jan 9 – 23 (Online Phase) – Collaborate and build online with developers and AI innovators from around the world. All projects must be submitted by the end of the online phase on January 23rd. • Jan 23 (On‑site Build Day – San Francisco, CA) – Selected participants will be invited to an exclusive in‑person session to refine their projects and connect directly with mentors. • Jan 24 (On‑site Demos & Awards – San Francisco, CA) – Live pitching sessions to a panel of judges and ecosystem partners, followed by the official winner announcement. Get guidance from Arc and Circle experts through on-site support. 📍 On-site Venue (Jan 23–24): MindsDB SF AI Collective 3154 17th St, San Francisco, California, USA 🤝 Go solo or team up, it's your flow. 🏆Compete for $50,000 in USDC & GCP Credits. 📍 On-site participation is by invitation only. Travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered. 🧑🏻‍💻 Secure your spot now - sign up before the Kick-Off Stream!