ETHOnline 2026 · Arc · Agentic Economy
Autonomous agents are paid in USDC for clinical assessment work — and only for work that survives being read.
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The problem
The idea
What the exchange buys
An assessment whose engine, shots, seed and commit are all present, so a stranger can re-decide the verdict without asking us anything.
What it refuses to buy
A number without its envelope. Losing is paid in full; being unreadable pays nothing.
That is the only incentive in the system, and it points at legibility rather than at optimism.
How a job runs
policy check -> agent identity ENS: is this the right payee, for this intent? -> human authority World ID: one unique human released the budget -> device confirmation Ledger: the release parameters tapped on hardware -> classical floor recorded FIRST, never revised after -> dequantization gate can a classical surrogate reproduce it? -> quantum leg a measurement, or assessed-blocked -> receipt grading PASS / GAP / STRUCTURAL / FAIL -> post-quantum seal SLH-DSA signature, verified on the spot -> anchor on Arc written BEFORE money moves -> USDC settlement only against a PASS receipt
The agents
Trust Agent
Holds the pathway budget, posts jobs, releases payment
fee 0%
cap 0.50 USDC / job
Baseline Agent
Runs the classical floor and the dequantization gate — always first
fee 30%
cap 0.12 USDC / job
Nexus Agent
Submits circuits to Quantinuum Nexus and returns a graded receipt
fee 55%
cap 0.15 USDC / job
Registry Agent
Anchors the receipt hash on Arc and serves the settlement ledger
fee 15%
cap 0.04 USDC / job
The Baseline Agent is paid for winning. A classical method that beats the quantum leg is exactly what the exchange commissioned.
The receipt
Every receipt carries
engine · backend qualifier · shots · seed · commit · tolerance 4·√(0.5/shots) · measured value · Bell control
Mechanism and performance are separate columns. The second never inherits the first’s PASS.
Grades
PASS — complete and consistent — the only payable grade
GAP — information missing; not the same as a false claim
STRUCTURAL — no recognised envelope attached at all
FAIL — envelope present and contradicted
The lane that did not run
Across four sites, how should endoscopy slots be allocated so no site holds a disproportionate backlog?
Needs a 32-qubit register. The account’s emulator ceiling is 26 qubits, so no execution lane exists.
Outcome
GAP · 0.00 USDC
No number was produced by quietly shrinking the problem. The classical floor — maximum site imbalance of 4 patients — stands unchallenged.
A limit that stops a run is a finding. Publishing it small is how a project starts hiding.
Gates added after being caught out
The floor is a family
Plain, balanced, resampled, tuned — the bar is the best of them. A win over an untuned baseline reads UNPOWERED-FLOOR and pays nothing.
Fitness before spend
A 20,000-record classical oracle ceiling of 0.40 against a 0.80 bar. Weak signal, not scarce data: unfit-cohort, no quantum budget released.
Pre-register, then amend
Bars fixed before compute, amendments listed. An amendment fixes the tool; it never moves the target.
Negatives kept at full size
A 17-qubit estimator lost ~33% of its signal and missed its degraded bar. Published as sIII-FAIL, not re-run until it sealed.
The rail · Arc
5042002
Arc Testnet — USDC is the gas token, six decimals, no paymaster
4 wallets
Circle developer-controlled: Trust, Baseline, Nexus, Registry — no EOA, no funded private key
Anchor → pay
ReceiptAnchor stores the receipt hash with signal, engine and shots before any transfer
A method that loses still gets paid, and the record says it lost. An unanchored receipt is not payable at all — every settlement and anchor is checkable on Arcscan.
ReceiptAnchor 0xd924f134e69f678e09bd31394f975b3cdbd2f52f
Switch to the app
Seven steps land in order, the receipt is graded in front of you, the hash is anchored, then the USDC moves.
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The boundary
Running for real
Pathway board · policy gate · classical floors · dequantization gate · receipt grading · SLH-DSA sealing · USDC settlement on Arc Testnet · ReceiptAnchor contract writes · every hash checkable on Arcscan
Simulated, and labelled as such
The MSK pathway now runs live on the Quantinuum Nexus H2-Emulator — emulator tier, never a QPU. Other quantum legs remain committed earlier runs. World ID credentials are deterministic stand-ins while the sandbox entitlement is pending.
Cohorts are synthetic. No patient-level data, no diagnosis, no efficacy or outcome claim.
Why the receipt is sealed
Logical qubits demonstrated
96
Needed to break ECDSA
824
Gap remaining
728
Sizing before submitting
The credit formula
HQC = 5 + (N1q + 10*N2q + 5*Nm) / 5000 * C
The +5 is per circuit, so for small circuits the program count dominates the bill before a single shot is taken.
Sized by hand
3,751
Sized by the model
885
Credits. Same question, same cohort, same verdict discipline.
How this was actually run
Identity · ENS
Name
Four ENSv2 Sepolia subnames under clinicalquantum.eth — one per agent.
Record
ENSIP-25 records carry the Arc actor address and the intent that agent may be paid for.
Check
The payee is resolved through the Universal Resolver and compared to the receipt. A mismatch blocks settlement.
The shared PermissionedResolver refused our writes, so we deployed our own AgentResolver and wired it through the ENSv2 registry.
AgentResolver 0xc305afd781febf64e84f83ce4eb38f4001352a4f · Sepolia 11155111
Authority · World ID
Selfie Check is an abuse-prevention and authorisation signal only — never identity, competence or clinical authority. Sandbox entitlement pending, so demo credentials are labelled simulated.
Ledger Agent Stack
What is next