The Clearing Layer Between
Agents and Facilitators
Agents generate millions of payments. Facilitators settle them on-chain. Stratum sits in the middle — compressing 10,000 payment instructions into 50 net transfers before they ever hit the chain.
Payments Cleared
0+
Compression Ratio
0:1
Cost per Txn
$0.000000
Gas Saved
$0
Where Stratum fits
Stratum sits between the payment event and the on-chain settlement. It compresses the work a facilitator has to do.
Without Stratum
With Stratum
Stratum is not a facilitator. It doesn’t verify x402 payments or sit in the HTTP request path. Stratum is a clearing coordinator — it receives signed payment receipts, compresses them through multilateral netting, and outputs the minimum set of transfers a facilitator needs to execute. The facilitator’s job doesn’t change. They just get better input.
Who benefits and how
Direct customer
For Facilitators
- 99% fewer on-chain transactions to execute
- 99% less gas spending
- No infrastructure changes — receive netted batches instead of raw payment streams
- Compression ratios of 100:1 to 10,000:1
“You already settle x402 payments. Stratum makes that 100x cheaper.”
Indirect beneficiary
For Sellers / API Providers
- Get paid every 60 seconds automatically
- Register once with a wallet address — USDC arrives
- Don’t need to understand netting, Merkle proofs, or clearing
- Same x402 flow you already use — nothing changes on your side
“You don’t integrate Stratum. Your facilitator does. You just get paid faster.”
Every payment system
hits the same wall
x402 works beautifully for the first thousand payments. Agent calls API, pays, gets response. But at scale — millions of agents calling thousands of APIs every minute — every single payment becomes an on-chain transaction. Facilitators are executing and paying gas on each one individually.
This is the same problem Visa solved in 1973, DTCC solved for securities, and ACH solved for bank transfers. The answer was never faster rails. It was a clearinghouse — an intermediary that collects all the payments, figures out who actually owes what to whom, and outputs the minimum set of transfers needed to make everyone whole.
Stratum is that clearinghouse for x402. It doesn’t replace facilitators. It doesn’t change the x402 protocol. It just sits between agents and facilitators, compresses the payment stream, and hands facilitators a clean, netted batch every 60 seconds.
Every high-volume financial system has a clearinghouse.
150M txns/day
Visa
Doesn’t send 150M bank wires. Nets and batches into a fraction.
$2.4Q/year
DTCC
Clears securities without moving the full value. Net settlement only.
1M+ payments/sec
Stratum
Compresses to <50 on-chain settlements. The clearinghouse for x402.
The agent economy needs the same infrastructure. Stratum is that infrastructure.
Step 1
The chaos
0
API calls / 5 min
AI agents generate millions of API calls per second. Today, every single one is a separate on-chain transaction — $5,000/sec in gas.
Under the hood
Four cryptographic primitives, composed into a clearing pipeline.
Cryptographic Receipts
Every payment generates an Ed25519-signed receipt with canonical encoding. Tamper-proof, deterministic, independently verifiable.
Append-Only Merkle Tree
Receipts are stored in an RFC 6962-compliant tree. Inclusion and consistency proofs let anyone verify the full audit trail.
Multilateral Netting
Aggregate net positions across all agents. Greedy matching pairs creditors with debtors to produce the minimum transfer set.
Chain Anchoring
One Merkle root per settlement window, anchored on Solana. The bridge from off-chain clearing to on-chain finality.
Two paths, one result
Submit payments. Stratum settles.
Install the SDK, call stratum.submit() where you currently settle on-chain. Stratum batches, nets, and executes USDC transfers automatically. You get a txHash for every payment.
npm install @v402valeo/facilitator— one package, zero dependencies- 3 lines of code to integrate — submit, check status, done
- Real USDC settlement every 60 seconds with on-chain proof
For Facilitators
Same job, 99% less work
You already settle x402 payments. Stratum compresses your payment stream so you execute 50 transfers instead of 10,000. Your infrastructure doesn’t change. Your costs drop by orders of magnitude.
Start receiving netted batches →Trust and verification
Stratum is designed so you don't have to trust Stratum.
TEE-Secured
Netting computation runs inside an Intel TDX Trusted Execution Environment on Phala Cloud. Cryptographic attestation proves the exact code that computed every settlement batch.
- Intel TDX hardware enclave
- Cryptographic attestation per window
- Open-source on Phala’s dstack
Verified
Every receipt, Merkle proof, and settlement batch is independently verifiable by any third party. Explorer provides real-time verification.
- Ed25519 signatures
- Merkle inclusion proofs
- Consistency proofs
On-Chain
Stratum settles USDC automatically to service wallets on Solana and Base. Merkle roots are anchored on-chain. Every settlement is independently verifiable.
- Automatic USDC settlement
- Merkle root on-chain anchoring
- Public analytics API
Three layers of trust: hardware attestation (TEE), mathematical proof (Merkle), and on-chain finality (Solana). Circle offers one. Stratum offers all three.