Coal — Payments For AI Agents

Coal

0G APAC Hackathon 2026 — Track 3: Agentic Economy

Payments for humans and AI agents — one checkout, real USDC on Base, verifiable receipts on 0G.

🎥 Watch

Coal is a programmable commerce platform for hosted checkout, merchant APIs, payment links, paywalls, recurring billing, and agentic commerce flows.

Coal is built around a simple split:

• Coal handles checkout orchestration, merchant operations, payer-info capture, recurring billing, and dual-protocol agent settlement flows on Base.
• 0G adds the sidecar layer for artifact storage, receipt proof anchoring, merchant memory, and AI commerce endpoints.

This repo is an active product branch, not a tiny demo. The current codebase includes:

• hosted checkout and payment links (humans)
• dual-protocol agent payments — Coinbase x402 (v1) and OKX APP (v2) on the same /verify endpoint
• MCP server for Claude Desktop / Cursor / ChatGPT agents (multi-tenant, per-request credentials)
• merchant dashboard and onboarding
• payer-info collection at checkout
• recurring billing foundations
• widget/embed surfaces + coal-react SDK on npm
• docs site + OpenAPI playground
• demo store with verified-payment download flow
• live agent demo running on 0G Compute (Qwen)
• live 0G storage / chain / compute / KV / DA integration

0G Integration — 5 Components on Mainnet

Coal uses five 0G network components. All live on 0G mainnet. Full setup walkthrough lives on the docs site at usecoal.xyz/docs.

1. 0G Storage — Immutable Artifact Layer

Every payment receipt, merchant profile, and encrypted memory snapshot is published to 0G Storage as an immutable, content-addressed artifact. AI agents and apps can discover merchants and verify payments by reading these artifacts directly from the decentralized storage network.

• Receipt payloads: tx hash, amount, payer address, merchant, metadata
• Merchant profiles: name, products, paywalls, supported tokens, API endpoints
• Encrypted memory: AES-256-GCM encrypted full catalog + settings (only Coal can decrypt)
• Explorer: storagescan.0g.ai

2. 0G Chain — Receipt Proof Anchoring

After publishing a receipt to 0G Storage, Coal anchors a SHA-256 hash of the receipt payload on-chain via the CoalReceiptAnchor V2 smart contract. Creates a tamper-proof, independently verifiable proof that a specific payment happened at a specific time. V2 calls the DASigners precompile (epochNumber()) and embeds the current DA epoch into every anchor event.

• Contract: 0x24a80A3Bb16d26D4063Ecd4B2fD64C6856E25E8b
• Chain: 0G mainnet (chain ID 16661)
• Explorer: chainscan.0g.ai/address/0x24a80A3B...

3. 0G Compute — AI Commerce Inference

Coal's agent-facing APIs use 0G Compute for AI inference on the decentralized GPU network:

• Memory query: Natural language Q&A against merchant data ("What products does this merchant sell?")
• Commerce routing: AI decides which merchant or product fits an agent's request
• Policy evaluation: AI evaluates scenarios against merchant rules ("Can this customer get a refund?")
• Sealed Inference: Privacy-preserving inference with per-response TEE attestation via broker.inference.verifyService(). Responses from sealed queries carry a verification signature from the Intel TDX + NVIDIA H100/H200 enclave they ran inside.

4. 0G KV — Mutable Merchant Mirror

KV writes keep merchant profiles, memory pointers, and paywall manifests always-current on top of the 0G log layer, so agent discovery returns fresh data without walking the full log history.

• merchant:profile:latest — merchant profile bundle
• merchant:memory:latest — memory pointer (storage URI + root hash + timestamp)
• paywall:{id}:manifest:latest — x402 paywall manifest

5. 0G DA — Payment Event Streaming

Every confirmed payment, subscription lifecycle event, and webhook delivery is posted as a DA blob to the 0G Data Availability layer via a gRPC sidecar. External systems monitoring the DA stream see events in real time.

• 6 event types: payment_confirmed, subscription_created, subscription_renewed, webhook_delivered, paywall_access_granted, receipt_anchored
• In-memory demo feed: api.usecoal.xyz/api/0g/da-events

Architecture

flowchart TB
    subgraph Actors
        M["Merchant<br/><small>Console Dashboard</small>"]
        C["Customer<br/><small>Browser / Wallet</small>"]
        AG["AI Agent<br/><small>AgentKit / x402</small>"]
    end

    subgraph Coal["Coal Platform"]
        direction TB
        API["Console API<br/><small>Products, Links, Keys, Settings</small>"]
        CHK["Checkout Engine<br/><small>Sessions, Payments, Verification</small>"]
        PW["Paywall Gateway<br/><small>x402, Access Control, Manifests</small>"]
        RP["Receipt Publisher<br/><small>Proof Generation, Anchoring</small>"]
        ACI["Agent Commerce API<br/><small>Memory, Routing, Policy Eval</small>"]
        SUB["Subscription Engine<br/><small>Recurring Billing, Renewals</small>"]
        WH["Webhook Delivery<br/><small>Events, Retries, HMAC Signing</small>"]
        DB[("Neon Postgres")]
        AUTH["Privy Auth"]
    end

    subgraph ZG["0G Network — 5 Components Live on Mainnet"]
        direction TB
        ZGS["<b>1. 0G Storage</b><br/><small>Immutable receipt logs<br/>Merchant profiles<br/>Encrypted memory snapshots</small>"]
        ZGC["<b>2. 0G Chain</b><br/><small>CoalReceiptAnchor V2<br/>Calls DASigners precompile<br/>SHA-256 proof anchors</small>"]
        ZGX["<b>3. 0G Compute</b><br/><small>AI commerce inference<br/>Sealed Inference with TEE<br/>Per-response attestation</small>"]
        ZGK["<b>4. 0G KV</b><br/><small>Mutable merchant mirror<br/>Per-merchant stream IDs<br/>Live agent discovery</small>"]
        ZGD["<b>5. 0G DA</b><br/><small>Payment event streaming<br/>gRPC sidecar<br/>6 event types</small>"]
    end

    BASE["<b>Base (Coinbase L2)</b><br/><small>USDC settlement<br/>RPC fallback: Alchemy → mainnet.base.org</small>"]

    M -->|API| API
    C -->|Checkout| CHK
    AG -->|x402 / API| PW
    AG -->|Commerce| ACI

    RP -->|publish| ZGS
    RP -->|anchor| ZGC
    ACI -->|infer| ZGX
    API -->|mirror| ZGK
    RP -->|DA events| ZGD

    CHK --> BASE
    API --> DB
    API --> AUTH

    style Coal fill:#1a1a2e,stroke:#334155,color:#e2e8f0
    style ZG fill:#115e59,stroke:#2dd4bf,color:#ccfbf1
    style BASE fill:#1d4ed8,stroke:#60a5fa,color:#bfdbfe
    style Actors fill:#f8fafc,stroke:#cbd5e1,color:#1e293b

Agent Payments — Dual-Protocol (x402 + OKX APP)

Coal's paywall /verify endpoint accepts both payment envelopes on the same URL — Coinbase's x402 (v1) and OKX's APP (v2). The dispatch picks the right settlement path based on the header version:

• x402 v1 — Coinbase agent payment standard, EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization on Base USDC. Gasless for the agent.
• APP v2 — OKX's agent payment whitepaper format. Same EIP-3009 wire underneath, different envelope.

Implementation:

• backend/lib/x402-settle.ts — x402 v1 settlement
• backend/lib/app-settle.ts — OKX APP v2 settlement
• backend/app/api/paywalls/[id]/verify/route.ts — version dispatch

Try the live x402 paywall on the oracle demo:

curl -i https://oracle.usecoal.xyz/api/price/ETH
# returns 402 Payment Required with the X-PAYMENT challenge

MCP Server (Claude Desktop / Cursor / ChatGPT)

Coal ships a multi-tenant MCP server at mcp.usecoal.xyz/api/mcp. 13 tools cover the full agent-commerce loop:

• discover_merchants, search_products, get_merchant_profile
• query_merchant_memory (TEE-backed natural-language Q&A)
• check_paywall, create_checkout, get_checkout_status
• verify_receipt (3-step proof trail: Base TX → 0G Storage → 0G Chain)
• get_0g_health, agent_wallet_status
• pay_merchant (USDC on Base via EIP-3009, gasless)
• download_product (verifies on-chain payment, returns signed download URL)
• setup_instructions

The server holds no long-lived secrets — every user passes their own wallet key via X-Coal-Agent-Key and their own Coal API key via X-Coal-Api-Key on each request.

// Claude Desktop config
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "coal": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.usecoal.xyz/api/mcp",
        "--header",
        "X-Coal-Agent-Key:0xYOUR_WALLET_PRIVATE_KEY"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Source: examples/coal-mcp-server/. Docs: frontend/app/docs/sdk/mcp/.

What Is Live

Merchant product surface

• Products, payment links, paywalls, API keys, team management, analytics, settings
• Console auth through Privy
• Async on-chain verification and webhook delivery
• Hosted renewal checkouts for recurring billing

Checkout surface

• Public checkout pages under /pay/[slug] and /pay/checkout/[id]
• Payer-info configuration and validation
• Direct settlement-token payments on Base
• Widget/embed flow using the real checkout lifecycle

Agentic / 0G surface

• Merchant profile publication to 0G Storage
• Merchant memory snapshots with encrypted storage payloads
• Verifiable receipt publication + 0G chain anchoring
• Agent-facing paywall manifests and verification routes
• AI commerce APIs backed by 0G Compute
• Console operator page at /console/0g

📈 Traction

Distribution:

• MCP server listed on Smithery and the official MCP Registry as well as PulseMCP
• React SDK coal-react v0.4.1 shipped on npm
• Documentation live at usecoal.xyz/docs with SDK, MCP, paywalls, agent-payments guides

Engagement beyond code:

• Walkthrough articles for builders + merchants
• Small bounty program — developers building on top of Coal
• Test users running live flows on the agent sandbox
• Daily replies + DMs across X, LinkedIn, Farcaster, Reddit, Discord, Telegram

Inbound signal:

"x402 + APP wire compat actually working is a real one… happy to point the mapper crawler at agent.usecoal.xyz for endpoint stability data in our public catalog." — CDP-verified Coinbase Developer Platform builder

Live proof anyone can check right now:

• API health: api.usecoal.xyz/api/0g/health → all 5 0G components green
• Receipt anchor on 0G Chain: 0x24a80A3Bb16d26D4063Ecd4B2fD64C6856E25E8b
• Live agent demo: agent.usecoal.xyz → Claude buys products end-to-end on mainnet in under 10 seconds

Project Stats

Quick Start for Judges

1. Watch an agent buy something autonomously: open agent.usecoal.xyz, fund a fresh agent wallet from the on-screen prompt, and ask Claude to buy any of the listed merchant products. End-to-end Base USDC payment + on-chain receipt + product download, no human in the loop.
2. Verify all 5 0G components live on mainnet:

   curl -s https://api.usecoal.xyz/api/0g/health | python3 -m json.tool
   

   Expect status: "ok" with storage, chain, compute, kv, and da all ok: true.
3. Verify a receipt's 3-step proof trail: visit /verify/[session-id] on any paid checkout — shows Base TX → 0G Storage root → 0G Chain anchor with explorer links to each.
4. Connect the MCP server to your own agent: paste the config snippet from the MCP Server section above into Claude Desktop, restart, and the 13 Coal tools show up.
5. Try the dual-protocol paywall: curl -i https://oracle.usecoal.xyz/api/price/ETH returns a 402 with the X-PAYMENT challenge, then resubmit with an x402 v1 OR an OKX APP v2 payment header and the same endpoint settles it.
6. Run an example locally: clone the repo, cd examples/coal-react-checkout, cp .env.example .env.local, fill in your API key, npm install && npm run dev. See also examples/demo-store/ for the merchant-side flow with verified downloads.
7. Browse the dashboard: sign in at usecoal.xyz with Privy → Console → 0G to see all 5 components with live mainnet status, activity feed, and publish controls.

Core Thesis

Coal is not being replaced by 0G.

• Coal is the payment execution and merchant operations layer.
• 0G is the storage, proof, memory, and AI layer around it.

That is the correct mental model for the repo.

Repo Layout

coal/
├── backend/          # Next.js API app, Prisma, on-chain verification, 0G logic
│   └── lib/0g/       # All 5 0G component implementations (Storage, Chain, Compute, KV, DA)
├── frontend/         # Next.js UI app, docs site, dashboard, checkout surfaces
├── contracts/        # CoalReceiptAnchor V2 Solidity contract + Foundry project
├── coal-mini-app/    # World App mini-app frontend (separate deploy)
├── packages/         # JS + React SDK surfaces
├── examples/         # Runnable integrations:
│   ├── coal-react-checkout/   # React checkout demo
│   ├── coal-agent/            # Live AI-agent demo (Claude → Coal merchants)
│   ├── coal-mcp-server/       # Multi-tenant MCP server
│   ├── coal-oracle-agent/     # x402 oracle paywall demo
│   ├── demo-store/            # Storefront with verified-payment download flow
│   └── agentkit-action/       # AgentKit action provider
├── scripts/          # Deploy + sync scripts
└── README.md         # You are here

System Architecture

Two separate Next.js apps are deployed from the same repo:

• backend runs the API, verification jobs, agent routes, and 0G services
• frontend runs the dashboard, docs, checkout UI, and public pages

Examples

The repo also includes runnable integration examples under examples:

• coal-react-checkout A full Next.js checkout demo built on @coal/react, including hosted checkout launch, success handling, receipt verification, and an agent-style simulation flow.
• agentkit-action A Coal action provider for AgentKit with checkout, receipt verification, paywall, merchant-memory, and policy-evaluation actions.
• demo-store A storefront-style example that creates Coal sessions, receives webhooks, and now verifies receipts against the 0G proof trail.

If you want the quickest demo path, start with coal-react-checkout and examples/coal-react-checkout/README.md.

Key Surfaces

Merchant-facing

• Console dashboard
• Products
• Payment links
• Subscriptions
• 0G operator page

Public checkout

• Slug checkout
• Direct checkout session page
• Payment view component

APIs

• Merchant API checkouts
• Pay session
• Pay confirm
• Verify payments cron
• 0G health
• Console 0G status

Agent / 0G routes

• Merchant profiles
• Memory ingest
• Memory query
• Commerce route
• Support answer
• Policy evaluation
• Recommendations

Authentication Model

Coal has three auth surfaces:

• Merchant API requests use x-api-key with coal_live_* keys
• Dashboard and /api/console/* routes use Privy Bearer JWTs
• MCP server (per-request) — each tool call carries the caller's own credentials in headers: X-Coal-Agent-Key (wallet private key, used by pay_merchant / agent_wallet_status) and X-Coal-Api-Key (Coal API key, used by create_checkout / query_merchant_memory). The server holds no long-lived secrets.

Legacy Better Auth has been retired from runtime use.

Settlement Model

Coal settles to the configured Base settlement token.

• USDC is the fallback default
• older MNEE_* environment aliases remain only as compatibility helpers
• the product is no longer MNEE-first

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24+
• npm
• Neon or another Postgres database
• (Optional) Alchemy API key for Base — Coal falls back to a public Base RPC if you skip this, so you can run locally without one
• Privy app credentials

1. Install dependencies

cd backend && npm install
cd ../frontend && npm install
cd ..

2. Configure environment files

cp backend/.env.example backend/.env
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env

Then fill in the required values in:

• backend/.env.example
• frontend/.env.example

Important backend values:

• DATABASE_URL
• ALCHEMY_API_KEY (optional — see RPC fallback note below)
• BASE_RPC_FALLBACK_URL (optional — second-tier RPC, e.g. Coinbase Developer Platform or QuickNode)
• PRIVY_APP_ID
• PRIVY_APP_SECRET
• NEXT_PUBLIC_FRONTEND_URL
• NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL
• CRON_SECRET

Base RPC fallback chain. Coal wraps the Base RPC in a viem fallback() transport so a single provider outage cannot stop payments. Priority order: ALCHEMY_API_KEY (if set) → BASE_RPC_FALLBACK_URL (if set) → https://mainnet.base.org (always). The local public node is the floor so the app boots even without an Alchemy key. See backend/lib/chain.ts.

Important frontend values:

• NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL
• NEXT_PUBLIC_PRIVY_APP_ID
• NEXT_PUBLIC_CHAIN_ENV
• NEXT_PUBLIC_COINBASE_BUNDLER_KEY

3. Prepare the database

cd backend
npx prisma db push

4. Run both apps

Open two terminals:

# Terminal 1
cd backend
npm run dev

# Terminal 2
cd frontend
npm run dev

Default local URLs:

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend: http://localhost:3001

Verification Commands

Backend

cd backend
npm run typecheck
npm test
npm run build

Frontend

cd frontend
npm run typecheck
npm run build

0G storage benchmark

cd backend
npm run 0g:storage:benchmark

0G Notes

0G is opt-in. Coal still works without it.

For complete setup instructions for all 5 components (Storage, Chain, Compute, KV, DA), see the docs site at usecoal.xyz/docs.

Minimum environment variables to enable 0G:

# Storage + Chain
ZERO_G_ENABLED=true
ZERO_G_CHAIN_RPC_URL=https://evmrpc.0g.ai
ZERO_G_CHAIN_PRIVATE_KEY=0x...
ZERO_G_RECEIPT_ANCHOR_ADDRESS=0x24a80A3Bb16d26D4063Ecd4B2fD64C6856E25E8b
ZERO_G_STORAGE_INDEXER_URL=https://indexer-storage-turbo.0g.ai
ZERO_G_STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY=<32-byte hex>

# Compute
ZERO_G_COMPUTE_ENABLED=true
ZERO_G_COMPUTE_PROVIDER=<provider_address>
ZERO_G_COMPUTE_BASE_URL=<provider_base_url>
ZERO_G_COMPUTE_API_KEY=<api_key>
ZERO_G_COMPUTE_MODEL=<model_name>
ZERO_G_SEALED_INFERENCE_ENABLED=true

# KV
ZERO_G_STORAGE_STREAM_ID=0x<64-hex-chars>

# DA (requires running a sidecar — see 0G-SETUP.md)
ZERO_G_DA_ENABLED=true
ZERO_G_DA_GRPC_URL=<sidecar_host>:51001
ZERO_G_DA_GRPC_TLS=false

The main implementation lives in:

• backend/lib/0g/storage.ts — Storage + KV
• backend/lib/0g/chain.ts — Chain anchor writes
• backend/lib/0g/compute.ts — AI inference + TEE attestation
• backend/lib/0g/da.ts — DA event streaming via gRPC
• backend/lib/0g/merchant.ts — merchant profile + memory publishing
• backend/lib/receipts/proof.ts — receipt proof pipeline
• contracts/0g-receipt-anchor/src/CoalReceiptAnchor.sol — V2 contract with DASigners precompile call

SDK / Widget

Canonical package surfaces:

• JS widget/runtime: packages/coal-js/coal.js
• React package: packages/react
• Public widget asset: frontend/public/coal-widget.js

Docs

Coal ships a docs site and a live docs playground:

• Docs: http://localhost:3000/docs
• Playground: http://localhost:3001/api/docs/ui

Key files:

• frontend/app/docs
• backend/app/api/docs/route.ts
• backend/app/api/docs/ui/route.ts

Deployment

Coal deploys as six Vercel projects from the same monorepo, each with its own rootDirectory:

Helper scripts:

• scripts/check-all.sh — backend + frontend typecheck + tests + build sweep.
• scripts/deploy.sh — local prebuild + push to Vercel for any subset of the six projects.

Branch Strategy

• main is the only branch on the public repo. Vercel production targets main.
• All development happens through the public repo's main (PRs merge there).

👥 Team

Three co-founders, friends for years. Shipping consumer products, payments, and AI tools together.

Coal went from zero to mainnet in six weeks. None of that happens without this team.

License

MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Coal.