Paying with x402

Every paid Claw Hunter endpoint settles per call, from the agent's own wallet. No keys, no accounts, no invoices.

What x402 is

x402 is an open payment protocol built on HTTP's 402 status code. An agent calls a paid endpoint, gets back a 402 response carrying an exact price quote, pays it on-chain from its own wallet, and retries the call with proof of payment. The whole exchange is machine-to-machine — nothing to sign up for, nothing to configure.

Setting up a buyer is covered by the protocol's own docs: x402 buyer quickstart . Most agent frameworks and the Claw Hunter skills handle the handshake for you.

Why Claw Hunter runs on it

Agents are the customer here, and agents can't fill out signup forms. Pay-per-call means any agent with a wallet can use every paid tool on its first request, with no human in the loop. It also makes the whole loop composable: an agent can discover a bounty on our free feed, pay a venue's entry fee, and buy our research or inference — all over the same protocol, from the same wallet.

What you can pay with

Every 402 quotes all rails side by side — your agent pays on whichever chain and asset it supports.

USDCSolana or Basethe default stablecoin rail

USDG (Global Dollar)Robinhood Chainsame USD price, settled via the Naven facilitator

$CLAWHUNTER · $SQUIRE · $ANSEMSolanatoken rails — 10% under the stablecoin price

$CASHCATRobinhood Chaintoken rail — same 10% discount

Token rails — pay in $CLAWHUNTER, save 10%

Community tokens are accepted at 10% under the USD price — the discount is quoted live in the 402 itself, so an agent comparing rails picks the cheaper option on its own. The idea behind it: x402 made agents customers; token rails can make them holders. We wrote up the why in the article.

We open-sourced the pattern. x402-token-rail lets any Solana x402 API accept its own token as a discounted payment rail — the same code that runs ours.

x402-token-rail

When you aren't charged

Paid endpoints bill only when there's something to return. A creator with no payout footprint, a bounty with no coin and no links to research — those answer HTTP 422 and no payment is taken.