# Nano payments for AI agents Nano (ticker XNO) is decentralised digital money with no protocol transaction fees and sub-second confirmation. That makes it usable for software that needs to pay for things: API calls, data, compute, content. This is a concept draft page. Canonical technical documentation lives at https://docs.nano.org/ ## Why build with Nano - **Feeless.** The protocol charges no transaction fee, so tiny payments are viable as a first-class part of an application rather than an afterthought. See /blog/the-beginners-guide-to-cryptocurrency-and-nano.html - **No separate gas token.** An agent only holds the nano it plans to send. There is nothing extra to buy or top up before it can pay. - **Fixed supply.** All nano was distributed by 2017 and the protocol issues no more, so the rules stay the same however many agents use it. See https://docs.nano.org/protocol-design/distribution-and-units/ - **Programmatic.** Community-built x402 tooling connects HTTP payment requirements to the software that fulfils them. See https://github.com/x402nano/exact - **Open.** Documented JSON RPC interfaces. You choose your infrastructure and keep signing and spending under your own control. See https://docs.nano.org/integration-guides/ Network fees are not the same as service costs. Plan separately for infrastructure, provider charges, and XNO exchange-rate exposure. ## The payment flow (x402, simplified) 1. **Request.** The agent requests a resource. The server replies `402 Payment Required` with a price and payment requirements. 2. **Pay.** The agent checks the payment requirements, then constructs a payment payload which the server verifies and settles. 3. **Receive.** Once the payment payload is settled by the server, the agent retries the request and the server returns the resource. A returned block hash is not, on its own, proof of confirmation. Confirm before releasing a resource. ## Integrating - JSON RPC reference and node setup: https://docs.nano.org/ - Running your own node: https://docs.nano.org/running-a-node/overview/ - x402 facilitator implementation for Nano: https://github.com/x402nano/exact - Community tools and services directory: https://hub.nano.org/ ## Services that already accept nano over x402 A live directory of endpoints that answer HTTP 402 and name Nano as the rail, each bought at least once with a real payment by pursekeeper, an autonomous agent that keeps the block hash as the receipt and reprobes every ten minutes: https://pursekeeper.dev/sellers NanoBazaar is a marketplace for the same kind of trade, agent to agent: sellers publish fixed-price offers, buyers browse them as JSON, requests and results are encrypted and the buyer pays the seller directly, with the relay never holding funds. Live offers start at Ӿ0.00001 with a five minute turnaround. https://nanobazaar.ai/ and https://relay.nanobazaar.ai/market/offers Agent instructions: https://nanobazaar.ai/llms.txt Machine readable forms of the same data: - https://pursekeeper.dev/sellers.json - https://pursekeeper.dev/llms.txt - https://pursekeeper.dev/.well-known/agent.json - https://facilitator.pursekeeper.dev/supported At 11:57 UTC on 18 September 2026 that snapshot listed 11 verified endpoints, 7 answering their declared unpaid status, and 8 that added Nano after being asked. Prices ranged from Ӿ0.00001 for a paid post to Ӿ8.1 for a scan kit. Sellers included LLM inference, a 38 route utility API, paid posts, a courier that delivers on a confirmed block, OpenAPI review, data QA, a red team kit, link checking, localization audit and spreadsheet cleanup. Status and prices are a snapshot, several sellers run on temporary tunnel hostnames, and a reachable probe does not mean a quote is available. Payments and outcomes are reported by pursekeeper and are not independently reproduced. Listing is not an endorsement and none of these services has been reviewed by the Nano Foundation. ## Accepting payments without running a node Some sellers hold and spend nano entirely over HTTP through a hosted facilitator: /v1/verify checks whether a block is a confirmed send of at least a given amount to an address, /v1/receivable lists confirmed sends waiting to be pocketed, and /v1/account_info, /v1/work and /v1/process cover the rest of a send. Free, no key, rate limited to 60 requests a minute per IP. This is third-party infrastructure, so read its trust assumptions before depending on it. Worked example: https://pursekeeper.dev/examples/no-node.md To sell: answer an unpaid request with 402 naming nano:mainnet, a price and an address; bind the quote to a hash of the request body so a payment buys one thing once; deliver on the paid retry and refuse a replayed or altered request. ## Spending controls to implement - Per-request and per-period spending caps enforced in your own code. - An allowlist of resource servers your agent may pay. - Confirmation checks before treating a payment as settled. - Separation of hot keys used for spending from any larger balance. - Logging of every payment decision for audit. ## Facts - Currency ticker: XNO. - Fixed supply: 133,248,297 XNO, fully distributed in 2017 via a CAPTCHA faucet. No ongoing protocol issuance. /blog/the-beginners-guide-to-cryptocurrency-and-nano.html and /blog/nano-cutting-our-cost-of-living-through-currency-design.html - Consensus: Open Representative Voting. No mining, no block rewards. - Observed average confirmation time: 338 ms as displayed by NanoSpeed, checked 17 September 2026. Methodology: https://nanospeed.info/about - Energy: about 0.000112 kWh (0.112 Wh) per transaction, less than a Google search (0.0003 kWh). /blog/what-if-money-worked-like-email.html How Nano stays efficient: /blog/what-makes-nano-one-of-the-most-energy-efficient-currencies.html - Representatives and nodes are independently operated. Voting weight can be redelegated by holders at any time. https://blocklattice.io/representatives ## Caveats Amounts and flows shown on the page are illustrative, not live transactions. Wallets, exchanges and other services may charge their own fees. XNO's market value can change.