AI Agents Using Money: Research, Guides & Live Data Hub

Start here Agentic finance is software that holds a balance, proves an identity, spends under policy and leaves an audit trail — with little or no human signature per action. The pages below cover how it works, who provides the rails, what the measured numbers say, and how to run it without losing the keys.

Research notes · PDF

Note 03 · 11 Oct 2026

Measured Before Trusted

Our detectors run against synthetic agent wallets with known answers (an adaptation of IBM's AMLSim), the two faults that found in the live rules, a balance test that separates a drain from a purchase, and the backtest over the whole ledger behind the 11 October corrections.

Note 02 · 2 Oct 2026

What the Counted Money Is

Seven investigations of agent payments on Base: own positions, loops, the price of a rank, survival, two populations, names, and a theft replayed. Version 1.2 adds where the bridged money went and the address poisoning around the theft.

Note 01 · 27 Sep 2026

The Binding Record

How we join an AI agent's identity to the money it moves, and what the first census of ERC-8004 agents on Base shows once that join is made honestly.

All research notes, newest first →

New research · September 2026

Measured

Most AI-agent money is not real spending

September study: of $4.86M that left agent wallets on Base, most was routing hops or money from before the agent existed. Where it went, and why outside estimates disagree.

Security

Know Your Agent needs a memory

The 2026 agent-wallet drains were about behaviour, not identity. What a drain looks like on-chain, and ten ways agent money goes wrong.

Vision

Keeping the books for machine money, 2026–2036

Five layers on one engine, three market scenarios, and what would prove us wrong. A plan, not a forecast.

Data health

The checks behind every number

Assertion checks over our own tables every three hours, each one live, with the rows it found.

Live tools

Engine

Every figure on one wheel

Agents' daily spending at the hub, every measured family around it, each spoke with its own chart and 7-day and 30-day moving averages.

Rank

Agents seen paying (L7+)

Every agent whose bound wallet has paid a different address, with its payments, counterparties and float.

Detections

The anomaly log

Mint bursts, retry storms, drain shapes and owner changes, each a shape with evidence, never a verdict.

Desk

Watch your own agents

Connect a wallet: agents side by side, alert rules, and notes synced to your wallet. Watch is free.

Guide

Register an agent and track its wallet

From an ERC-8004 registration to a ranked record, with every rule the code applies.

MCP

Connect your AI to the ledger

A free, read-only MCP server at /mcp for Claude, Cursor or any agent framework.

Guides & comparisons

01 · Definition

What is agentic finance?

The 2026 working definition, the four rails, the five live behaviors, and honest sizing.

02 · How-to

Connect an AI agent to a Web3 wallet

Identity → wallet → policy → MCP → settlement. Kits, session keys, x402, and a security checklist.

03 · Comparison

Best agent wallet & payment providers, compared

Coinbase, Privy, Circle, Turnkey, Cloudflare, MetaMask, Alchemy and more — custody, policy, chains, rails.

04 · Statistics

Agent payments & liveness statistics 2026

Volume, ticket size, USDC share, registrations vs working agents — every figure with window, source and caveat.

05 · Treasury

Where AI agents park idle USDC

Yield agents, ERC-4626 vaults and regulated RWA — how to evaluate a sink for machine cash.

06 · Security

Agent wallet security checklist

Prompt injection, god-keys, where policy is really enforced, and a 12-point operator checklist.

07 · Analysis

Agentic commerce market size: forecasts vs measured

Gartner and McKinsey trillions against tens of millions on measurable rails — how to read the gap.

The standards, explained with data

Identity

ERC-8004

Passports without a pulse: registries, counts, and the 2.24% working-service problem.

Policy

EIP-7702

The valet-key model: delegation in place, session keys, and the god-key flag.

Payments

x402

HTTP 402 machine payments: the flow, the measured numbers, the vanity-volume caveat.

Method

The L0–L9 liveness ladder

How we count agents, verify coverage, and refuse vanity numbers.

Live

Machine-money panels

Stablecoin float, on-chain vault reads, AI-agent tokens, DeFi TVL — refreshed every visit.

Product

The Graph

Entities, edges, views, and the API sold back to the agents over MCP and x402.

History, people and the map

Where this sector came from, who wrote the standards it runs on, and which firm owns which layer. Dated, sourced, and separated from the marketing.

Changelog

September 2026: the job rail, decoded

What we track, what we solve, and everything that shipped this month — with every figure live.

History

History of agentic finance

Multi-agent systems, an unused HTTP status code, and four standards that landed in sixteen months.

People

Who wrote the rails

The named authors of ERC-8004, x402, A2A and MCP, with the organisation each was at during the work.

Map

Agent economy map 2026

Six layers, three industries sharing one adjective, and a five-point test for who belongs on it.

Words

Agentic finance vs AgentFi vs agent TVL

Four objects quoted as one number, and the three errors that produce fictional totals.

Rail

x402: from status code to foundation

Coinbase, Cloudflare, and forty members including Visa and Mastercard. Plus the identity gap it leaves.

Protocols

MCP and A2A

One reaches a tool, the other reaches a stranger. Why swapping them rots an architecture.

Partner gravity: their catalog, our qualifier

Every marketplace publishes a census of itself. None of those counts answer the only question that matters — how many of these names are economic actors. These pages run our own qualifier over somebody else's catalog, with our denominator, and publish what is blocked as readily as what is measured.

Virtuals

How to use this hub

Building an agent that holds money? Start with the wallet guide, then the security checklist.
Allocating or evaluating vendors? The provider comparison and the treasury guide.
Writing or researching? The statistics page and the methodology — cite the window and the date, not the headline.
Operating a fleet? Open the Desk: your agents’ books and alerts, in open beta.

AI agents using money on the internet — everything we publish.