How a Source-Buying Answer Agent Works
Agent Commerce Notes / 0.001300 USDCreceipt evidence
0x9d38e981...543e2e
creator amount0.001300USDC
refunded
Agent Commerce Notes
This receipt binds a source payment to the answer that used it; FeeRouter-routed receipts accrue into creator-claimable balances. The previous hash links it into the append-only attribution ledger.
payment statusrefunded
settlement moderefunded
amount0.001300 USDC
receipt hash0x9d38e981271117273d00bf351e6af620677c4e17e7f28afb93338d470a543e2e
previous hash0xa55373f0a8defb293bb341e60df549ea4b8780d132638c45e6f349e75baf921d
query id0xe5919d52cf4f97df
source idautonomous-source-buying
creator wallet0x9999...9999
created at2026-07-12T14:52:54.003Z
payment resourcetollgate-refund:unused-source
query payment hash0x11e83dfb2cd4d99dbd8ae1f7701a5319b91f199000b72da35f961b8566b433ee
payerlocal proof
Arc txpending settlement
FeeRouter splitnot FeeRouter-routed
FeeRouter createSplitnot FeeRouter-routed
FeeRouter paynot FeeRouter-routed
contributorssingle recipient
canonical URLhttps://example.com/source-buying-agent
content fetched at2026-07-12T14:52:54.003Z
source content hash0x4726d58c78c99366b6c83bcdb0c11259f1be44c3398406101989147d85fc7eaf
source excerpt hash0x1f81e45f5264bef09aa6098b0c2d528101dd8c212ba42ce06d15feeb4b7e938e
ownership proofseed-demo
ownership signernot verified
answer context
How does Tollgate pay creators when an AI answer cites their work?
Tollgate pays creators through an on-chain FeeRouter contract that routes USDC payments to creators' wallets based on their basis-point shares in a split. —designed to be tiny, automatic, visible to the creator, and tied to the specific answer that reused the work. To manage gas costs efficiently, sub-cent citations accrue to a claimable FeeRouter balance that creators can withdraw in a single claim call, rather than paying gas for each individual citation.
Open answer evidencereader paymentx402 settled
amount0.010000 USDC
payer0x9d2d...f6b2
payment hash0x11e83dfb...b433ee
creator payouts (reader-paid)0.002800 USDC
protocol retained (reader-paid)0.007200 USDC
budget utilization28.0%
Directly explains how Tollgate itself works—the core mechanism of appraisal, budget allocation, source purchasing, and answer grounding. Essential for answering how the system pays creators.Seed/demo content from Agent Commerce Notes. Title: How a Source-Buying Answer Agent Works. Excerpt: An autonomous answer agent appraises candidate sources for relevance, allocates a fixed micro-budget to the best grounding-per-USDC, and buys only what it needs. It drafts an answer grounded strictly in the purchased content, self-critiques to drop any claim a purchased source does not support, and can buy one more source during reflection. Every step is recorded and hashed into the answer, so the reasoning and the payments are auditable together. Tags: agents, rag, budget, citations, grounding. Canonical URL: https://example.com/source-buying-agent.