Tollgate

Reuse becomes revenue. AI cites, someone downloads a photo, someone streams a video — the creator gets paid per use, in USDC on @Arc with a hash-linked receipt.

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Tollgate — a payment rail for pay-per-piece content on Arc.

Watch how it actually works: an AI answer agent that pays creators per citation, a photo-licensing sidecar where sellers sign up with just an email (no wallet needed), and one dashboard tying both earnings together — all settling in real USDC on Arc testnet.

458 on-chain receipts and counting, all publicly verifiable on a hash-chained ledger.

Built for the Lepton Agents Hackathon (@thecanteenapp x @circle x @arc).

🔗 https://t.co/mqM13PTeNb
🔗 https://t.co/na4a2NtujI

[RIDWAN @Ggudman1]

Just wrapped up the Programmable Money on Arc Bootcamp hosted by @arc and @encodeclub!

Spent the past few weeks diving deep into programmable stablecoins on Arc, covering payment primitives, fee routing, and building composable money flows for real-world apps.

I'm already putting these concepts into practice with @Tollgatewd. It is a plugin that pays creators per download in USDC on Arc, complete with a public, tamper-evident receipt for every transaction.

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Closed the biggest gap in Tollgate (Arc testnet, Lepton Agents Hackathon) this week.

The AI agent's spending decisions are no longer just logged. Instead, they are cryptographically enforced on-chain before a single cent moves.

Here is what shipped:
- PayGate: One atomic on-chain transaction anchors the signed EIP-712 intent, enforces its spend cap, and pays creators. A bad signature or over-cap request reverts the entire process, including the funds.

- True Counterfactual Contribution: Creators are paid by Q(S) - Q(S \setminus \{i\})$ rather than just citation count.

- Judge-Strict Mode: There is no silent fallback if the LLM fails, resulting in visible failure only.

- No-Secret Verifier: Running npm run judge:verify now passes 21 of 21 checks against production, requiring zero trust.

We are measuring results instead of making empty claims. On a fixed 50-question benchmark comparing a strict live agent against a deterministic baseline, Tollgate achieved 3.6x more supported claims per 1 cent, brought unused purchases down from 57% to 15%, and recorded 0 errors.

Verify it yourself: https://t.co/mqM13PTeNb

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Big week building Tollgate.

Today, AI bots read the internet for free. Tollgate changes that. It gives websites a way to get paid automatically when an AI (like a chatbot or crawler) reads or uses their content, instead of getting scraped for free — automatically, in cents, with no invoices.

Here is what's new this week:

- WordPress Integration: Any WordPress blog can now turn this on in 2 minutes. Install a plugin, paste one key, and you're done. No coding required.

- Aperture Launch: Photo and video creators can list their work, get paid per view, and cash out. No crypto wallet is needed to sign up, just an email.

- Unified Dashboard: One dashboard now shows everything you've earned in one place.

- Payment Reliability: Fixed a bug where two simultaneous payments could clash. Now, every single payment lands cleanly.

We are also tracking the real numbers so far, all verified on a live test network:

- 20 outside creators have content plugged in, with 3 having confirmed ownership.

- 459 individual payments have been processed, totaling about 76 cents in real stablecoin.

- 10 photos and videos are currently listed for sale.

- 2 creators from outside my own circle signed up and claimed their earnings entirely on their own.

- 1 total stranger found the platform and signed up with zero help from me.

Try it out: https://t.co/mqM13PTeNb

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Our blog earns $0 every time ChatGPT reads it. We are fixing that, and this week we made it a one click fix.

Tollgate now plugs into any WordPress site: install a plugin, paste an API key, and every AI crawler that reads your post pays you first. No wallet. No code. Real HTTP 402, not a suggestion.

Also shipped this week:

- Aperture: License your photos and videos with watermarked previews. Sign up with just an email, no wallet needed.

- Unified Dashboard: One single view for everything you are owed across both Aperture and Citations.

- Settlement Hardening: Core updates to prevent concurrent payouts from colliding on chain.

Per use payments were always too small to bother with. Nanopayments on @arc just made them real.

Go get paid for what you already made: https://t.co/mqM13PTeNb
cc: @thecanteenapp

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

First creator withdrawal through Tollgate/Aperture.

Listed the work, got paid, withdrew the balance.

This is the creator economy loop I wanted to prove: not “earnings” trapped in a dashboard, but real money a creator can move.

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Just submitted Tollgate to the @thecanteenapp x @circle x @arc Lepton Agents Hackathon

Tollgate is a payment rail for pay-per-piece content — creators get paid the instant their work is used. No subscriptions. No wallet required to start.

Two live products, one rail:

📚 Citations — an AI answer agent that pays creators per citation, in real USDC on Arc, at query time. Every payment is on a public, hash-chained, verifiable ledger.

📷 Aperture — a photo-licensing sidecar. Sign up with just an email (no wallet), upload or link a photo, get a watermarked preview, get paid the second someone licenses the original.

One login. One dashboard. Earnings from both products, aggregated by wallet.

Built on Next.js + Arc testnet, a custom FeeRouter smart contract, x402 for machine-payable settlement, Circle Gateway + custodial wallets for keyless onboarding, and Claude powering the answer agent.

Live now:
🔗 https://t.co/UUWQgHOftY
🔗 https://t.co/T0kG0qNvv9

Try it, list something, ask it a question — and tell me what breaks

[Tollgate @Tollgatewd]

Tollgate: A Toll Booth for Content

Every time an AI cites your article, someone downloads your photo, or streams your video, you get paid nothing. Subscriptions and ad revenue never solved this because per-use payments were always too small to process profitably. A bank cannot handle a 2-cent charge, so the internet simply did not pay creators for individual reuse.

Nanopayment rails changed the math. I built Tollgate, a toll booth for content. Any time your work gets used, you receive automatic payment of a few cents, instantly, together with a receipt that proves the transaction happened.

How It Works
1. Someone or an autonomous agent wants to use your content. For example, this could be an AI answering a question, downloading a photo, or streaming a video.

2. They pay a small fee via x402, a payment-required HTTP standard. No invoice, account, or subscription is required.

3. Circle Gateway batches the payment so it settles gas-free.

4. USDC moves on Arc to a shared on-chain router that splits the payment directly to the creator’s wallet.

5. Every payment generates a hash-linked receipt that proves both the use occurred and that you were paid for it.

Live Integrations

- AI answers: Autonomous agents buy the sources they cite and pay each creator per citation.

- Photos (Immich): A self-hosted photo server sidecar gates downloads with x402 and pays photographers per licensed download. No changes are needed to the upstream app.

- Video (PeerTube): The published plugin [email protected] gates video downloads and routes per-download USDC straight to the creator’s claimable payout.

Proof, Not Promises

- Every settled payment writes a hash-linked receipt you can verify yourself. The testnet ledger currently shows 395 receipts across 142 paid queries, each traceable to a real on-chain transaction on @arc .

Try It Yourself
Full proof pack: https://t.co/CfzSsbIJNJ
Ask a paid question: https://t.co/mqM13PTeNb
Photo licensing proof: https://t.co/na4a2NtujI
Video payout proof: https://t.co/Ya5hYzuH6i
cc: @thecanteenapp