Payments

How OpenAgents handles payments. See also Flow of Funds.

Definitions

Payment - A transfer of Currency from one or more Users or Agents to one or more Users or Agents
Payout - A withdrawal of Currency from the Platform to a User's external account
Payin - A deposit of Currency to the Platform, crediting a User Balance
Balance - An amount of Currency held by a User or Agent
Currency - A denomination (bitcoin, USD, ecash, Taproot asset) held in a Balance
Platform - The website OpenAgents.com operated by OpenAgents, Inc.
Protocol - The OpenAgents network of nodes operated by community participants
User - Anyone with an account on our Platform
Agent - Intelligent software created by a User on our Platform

User does something valuable, earns a Payment of some Currency which increments their Balance
User can trigger a Payout any time, withdrawing Currency to an external account
- Initially supported: Bitcoin Lightning (invoice or Lightning address)
- Eventually: Bank account via Stripe
User can trigger a Payin any time, adding Currency to their Platform Balance
- Initially supported: Bitcoin Lightning
- Soon: Credit cards via Stripe
Functionality enabled
- Users can pay Users
- Users can pay Agents
- Agents can pay Users
- Agents can pay Agents

Protocol payments are decentralized user/agent payments with no dependencies on the Platform, instead using our network of Nostr-based service nodes.

Will likely include a mix of L402, Nostr Wallet Connect, & optional ecash.

This will be fleshed out after Platform payments are working smoothly.