Research and implementation notes from QBT Labs on x402, AMP, MPP, stablecoin micropayments, agent API monetization, OpenMM, and the market-making infrastructure we operate in production.
The companion piece to Beyond the Wallet. That post covered the policy layer in front of the signature; this one covers the operations layer behind it — receipts, settlement, audit logs, and failure handling.
Subscriptions and API keys were built for humans, not agents. A practical guide to x402, AMP, and MPP — plus a concrete provider checklist for shipping agent-native pricing in under a week.
Giving an agent a wallet is the easy part. Production agent payments need budgets, allowlists, signer isolation, receipts, and policy before any signature is produced.
AI agents can reason and plan, but they can't pay. x402 lets agents pay for APIs mid-workflow — no wallets, no humans.
Choosing a crypto market maker in 2026 is one of the most consequential vendor decisions a post-TGE project makes. This guide gives you a clear framework for evaluation.
Most token projects think about market making wrong. Loan dumping, fake volume, and wide spreads cost more than the monthly fee. Here's how to avoid it.
How does channel state actually work on different chains? What makes AMP settlement secure? A technical deep dive for builders.
Most market making systems are black boxes. This post opens ours — from the first tick to the filled trade.
The agentic economy needs payment rails. x402, AMP, and MPP each solve the problem differently. Here's how to choose.
AI agents are becoming autonomous. But they can't pay for things on their own — until now. x402 and MPP are changing how machines transact on the internet.
Red flags, due diligence checklists, and a practical framework for choosing between self-service and managed market making. The founder's guide to evaluating market making proposals.
Liquidity fragmentation across CEXs and DEXs hurts token projects. Learn how multi-exchange market making creates price consistency, captures cross-venue spreads, and why OpenMM unifies it all.
Spread mechanics, adverse selection, inventory risk, and volatility management. A deep dive into how market makers actually think about pricing — and how OpenMM automates it.
Complete breakdown of crypto market making costs: retainer models ($2K-250K/mo), token loan deals (1-5% supply), hidden costs, and self-service alternatives. Real pricing benchmarks for 2026.
Honest comparison of OpenMM and Hummingbot. Feature matrix, strengths, weaknesses, and when to choose each open-source trading tool.
Learn how MCP servers give AI agents real trading capabilities. Install OpenMM MCP in 60 seconds and let Claude trade crypto across 4 exchanges.
Every time you buy or sell a token, someone is on the other side of that trade. That someone is often a market maker — and without them, financial markets wouldn't function.
How we achieved a 58x speedup — from 33 blocks/min to 1,916 blocks/min — by rethinking everything about our indexing pipeline.
Building a production-grade market making toolkit for Cardano native tokens across 4 centralized exchanges — architecture decisions, patterns, and hard-won lessons.
How we secure Cardano stake pools in production — from air-gapped key management to relay architecture — and how it compares to what the pros do across chains.
Step-by-step guide to setting up a Cardano stake pool — from hardware requirements and Guild Operators setup to key management, pool registration, and monitoring.