agenthill
Payment channels for agents

Capital-efficient
channels for
agent payments

Non-custodial cross-chain payment channels with DeFi-yielding hub liquidity.

Get early access → See how it works
Settlement
<1s
Cross-chain
Fees
0.01%
Even for micropayments
Throughput
1,000,000
TPS
Chains
Any
EVM · Solana · Tron · Base
Why now

Agent payments became real
in 2025–26

The category went from speculative to live infrastructure inside twelve months. The numbers behind it.

x402 volume
$600M+
165M+ txns · 69k agents (Coinbase, Apr 2026)
MCP servers
11,000+
Less than 5% monetized today
x402 Bazaar
10,000+
endpoints · AWS AgentCore, May 2026
x402 Foundation
14+
Visa · Google · AWS · Cloudflare · Stripe · Mastercard
Technology

Hub-and-spoke, channel-routed, atomic

One channel per endpoint. Sub-cent payments aggregate off-chain. Settlement is atomic across chains via HTLC. Hubs route, never custody.

[00.21] channel.open ↻
[00.48] route.found ↗ 2 hops
[00.83] htlc.commit ✓
[00.92] settle.final
■ privacy:on
■ yield:on
Why AgentHill

A different layer
than the obvious competitors

We don't replace x402 or stablecoin issuers — we add the channel layer in between. Single-shot belongs to facilitators. High-frequency and cross-chain belongs here.

CAPABILITY AGENTHILL X402 FACILITATORS CROSS-CHAIN BRIDGES LIGHTNING
Cross-chain settlementChannels + HTLCSingle-chain per-txMessage-passingBTC only
Off-chain aggregation✓——✓
Sub-cent fees1–15 bpsPer-tx gas + takeBridge fee1–15 bps
Multi-stablecoinUSDC · USDT · PYUSDUSDC-lockedLimited—
Yield-bearing liquidity3–5% APY via DeFi——No native BTC yield
Non-custodial routing✓Mixed✓✓
01 · PRIVATE
Non-custodial by design
Atomic HTLC settlement between sender and receiver. Hubs route, never custody. Compliant privacy on the wire.
02 · YIELD-BEARING
Capital that earns
Idle channel liquidity deposited via share-based proxy contracts. 3–5% APY in Aave/Compound while routing.
03 · CHAIN-AGNOSTIC
One channel, any asset
USDC, USDT, PYUSD across Base, Solana, Tron, Ethereum. x402-native — drop in for any MCP server.
Moat

Hub economics that compound

Channel networks have one structural moat: liquidity network effects. They also have one structural problem: bootstrapping hubs when capital is locked and unproductive. AgentHill solves the second to unlock the first.

LIGHTNING (BTC)
Routing fees only
BTC has no native yield. Lightning hubs earn fractions of a basis point on locked capital. Network has stayed at ~5,000 BTC capacity for years.
Result: retail UX forced custodian collapse (WoS, Strike). No middle tier of hubs.
AGENTHILL (STABLECOINS)
Routing fees + DeFi yield
Stablecoin liquidity earns 3–5% APY in Aave/Compound via share-based proxy contracts. Hubs viable at far lower volume.
Result: many medium hubs, real routing topology, agents (not humans) as the endpoint.
Use cases

Where agents pay agents

MCP monetization is the wedge — 11,000+ servers, <5% monetized. Adjacent stablecoin payment categories use the same channel layer.

WEDGE01
MCP Tool Calls
11,000+ MCP servers, less than 5% monetized. Drop-in x402 facilitator with cross-chain settlement.
$ tool.invoke — pay/call
PRIMARY02
AI Computing
Streaming GPU and inference leases. Pay-per-second metering settled through channels.
$ lease.gpu — pay/second
PRIMARY03
Data Feeds
Video, text, signals — sold at agent granularity. Per-request, per-byte. No eyeballs, no ads.
$ GET /page — 402 required
ADJACENT04
Cross-border Payouts
Contractor and vendor flows on rails priced for sub-cent overhead, not card networks.
$ payout.send — pay/contract
ADJACENT05
Agent↔agent Commerce
Autonomous systems exchange value without a human in the loop or a credit card.
$ a2a.invoke — pay/call
ADJACENT06
Programmable Treasury
Pay per article, per MB, per API call — only for what you actually use. Unbundle subscriptions.
$ pay.as.you.go — pay/use
Team

Built channel networks before.
Shipping is the credential

Almost nobody else in agent payments has shipped channel infrastructure. We've been doing it since 2016.

CEO
Slava Zhygulin
Co-author of the Flare routing algorithm (2016, with Lightning Labs) — the foundational paper on payment-channel-network routing. Co-founder and CTO at Stroom Network. Working on channels since 2016.
CPO
Rostyslav Shvets
Co-founder and CEO of Stroom Network — Bitcoin liquid staking on Lightning, reached $35M TVL in production. Earlier: Bitfury (2017+) on protocol and product. Decade in crypto infrastructure.
COO
Vladyslav Shvets
Operations, partnerships, and hub liquidity. Prior experience scaling crypto infrastructure operations alongside the Stroom team.
Get in touch

Let’s build the
payment layer
for agents

Integrating AgentHill into your agent stack, joining the team, or just curious — drop a line.