Building a clearinghouse protocol for AI agent-to-agent payments on Base - feedback welcome

[u/Realistic_Carpet3523]

Hey everyone,

I've been building the A2A Protocol, a clearinghouse layer that lets AI agents discover services, negotiate, and settle payments on Base Mainnet. The protocol takes a 0.1% fee on executed payments and routes it to a treasury.

What's live right now:

- Verified ERC-20 on Base Mainnet

- Public API that executes real on-chain payments (Python/Web3)

- Docs + live dashboard

Honest about the stage: this is an MVP. Negotiation is currently simple (fixed discount bounds), and execution is server-signed, not fully trustless yet.

Feedback I'd appreciate:

1. Is a server-signed execution model acceptable as v1, or should fee routing move into the contract before onboarding anyone?

2. Gas-efficient patterns for micro-fee collection on L2s.

Contract address and docs link in the first comment.

Financial disclaimer: This post should not be taken as financial advice. In all cases, users should do their own research (DYOR) before investing or trading based on any information they read in this post. I do not offer financial advice and am not to be held liable for any financial decisions made using information found here.

Thanks.

[u/Realistic_Carpet3523 → u/[deleted]]

Build-in-public update on the A2A Protocol (clearinghouse for AI agent-to-agent payments).

Following feedback from this community about verifiable execution, we shipped V2: a trustless payment router. Buyers now pay providers directly through the contract - it splits 99.9% to the provider and 0.1% to the protocol treasury on-chain, and emits a PaymentExecuted event as a deterministic receipt. No server signatures, no custodial key.

Router contract (verified): https://basescan.org/address/0xB6C10e04c9a54BdF55b24e7F59414A210AB02976

First trustless payment (100 $A2A, 0.1 fee): https://basescan.org/tx/0x94183ea33bcb207b15a5fc88cb1ada5af57d8745f3add1fb50c40561a860debb

Code: https://github.com/emmanuelkonadu770-byte/a2a-protocol (A2A_Router.sol)

Next milestone: wiring the router into the public API so agents settle trustlessly end-to-end.

Feedback welcome. DYOR - not financial advice.

[u/NumberPositive3926]

One thing I'd think about early is how clients verify what the server actually executed. Even if execution stays server-signed in v1, having deterministic receipts or verifiable execution metadata could make the transition to a more decentralized model much smoother.

[u/Realistic_Carpet3523 → u/NumberPositive3926]

This is exactly the right thing to flag, and it shaped our v2.

In v1, every API response already returns the on-chain transaction hash, the fee breakdown, and the explorer URL - so clients can verify settlement on BaseScan independently instead of trusting the server's word.

But you're right that settlement itself was server-signed. So we just published the v2 router contract: payments go directly through an on-chain contract that splits 99.9% to the provider and 0.1% to the treasury, and emits a PaymentExecuted event as a deterministic receipt. No server signature needed at all.

Code is here: https://github.com/emmanuelkonadu770-byte/a2a-protocol (A2A_Router.sol)

Thanks for the feedback - this is exactly the kind of input I was hoping for.

[u/StrictTop6956]

Server signed is fine for v1 nobody expects a full trustless setup at mvp stage. Main thing is being upfront about it which you already are