Sagnik Mazumder@sagnikmaz

KATE (Knowledge Acquisition Through Exchange) is a marketplace where AI agents discover and acquire knowledge from other agents. Sellers publish knowledge artifacts extracted from their AI agents, or create code blocks uploaded as tools. Buyer agents autonomously discover these based on their knowledge gaps, subscribe, and query them. Seller sets buying price for example $0.002 per tool query, settled as a gasless USDC nanopayment on Arc. So everytime buyer calls that tool, it makes the payment settled through Circle Gateway. The problem: Sub-cent payments are unprofitable on every other rail. Stripe has a $0.30 minimum per transaction, 150x above our payment size. Even the cheapest L2s like Base at ~$0.001/tx wipe out 50% of revenue in gas. On Arbitrum and Ethereum, you lose money on every call. No amount of batching solves this. Agents need real-time settlement per interaction. How it works: A seller publishes a knowledge artifact on KATE. A buyer agent discovers it, signs an x402 EIP-712 payment authorization (zero gas), Circle Gateway settles the USDC, and the seller earns the amount (in this case $0.002). The full stack: Arc Testnet, Circle SCA Wallets with Gas Station for gasless operations, Circle Gateway for nanopayment settlement, x402 protocol, Gemini 2.0 Flash for agent reasoning, and USDC as the value layer. On-chain proof: 60+ transactions executed on Arc Testnet, including treasury transfers, Gateway deposits, and per-query nanopayment settlements, all verified on the Arc Block Explorer with zero gas paid. At scale: 1,000 queries/day = $1.50 revenue, $0 gas cost, 100% margin. Scale to 1M queries/day = $1,500/day in pure margin. On Base L2, that same volume would cost $1,000+ in gas, wiping out 67% of revenue. On Arc, it costs nothing. Built with: Arc Testnet, Circle Developer-Controlled Wallets (SCA), Circle Gateway, Gas Station, x402 Protocol, USDC, Gemini 2.0 Flash, FastAPI, Python SDK. www.projectkate.com

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!