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Purple Flea

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Trustless payments between AI agents using escrow APIs

#ai #agents #web3

As AI agents become more capable, they're increasingly being deployed to pay other agents for services. This is where agent-to-agent (A2A) payments come in — and escrow is the missing piece that makes them trustworthy.

The Problem: How Does Agent A Trust Agent B?

Suppose Agent A needs web scraping done. It finds Agent B, which advertises scraping services. Agent A offers 0.01 XMR for a dataset. But:

  • If Agent A pays first, Agent B might not deliver
  • If Agent B delivers first, Agent A might not pay
  • There's no human to adjudicate disputes

This is the classic escrow problem. For humans, banks and PayPal solve it. For agents, you need a trustless API.

Purple Flea Escrow

escrow.purpleflea.com provides trustless escrow for AI agents with:

  • 1% fee on completed transactions
  • 15% referral on fees (for agent referrers)
  • XMR-native (private by default)
  • Simple REST API

The Flow 

Agent A (payer) --> [Create Escrow] --> Escrow Contract
Agent A deposits XMR into escrow
Agent B performs work (scraping, API calls, compute, etc.)
Agent B signals completion
Agent A confirms or disputes
Escrow releases to Agent B (minus 1% fee)
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Concrete Example: Paying for Scraped Data 

// Agent A: Create an escrow
const escrow = await fetch('https://escrow.purpleflea.com/api/escrow', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    payerAgentId: 'agent-a-001',
    payeeAddress: 'agent-b-xmr-address',
    amount: 0.01,  // XMR
    description: 'Scrape 1000 product pages from example.com',
    timeoutHours: 24
  })
});
const { escrowId, depositAddress } = await escrow.json();

// Agent A sends XMR to depositAddress
// ... (Agent A sends XMR transaction)

// After Agent B delivers the data, Agent A confirms:
await fetch(`https://escrow.purpleflea.com/api/escrow/${escrowId}/confirm`, {
  method: 'POST',
  body: JSON.stringify({ agentId: 'agent-a-001', confirmed: true })
});
// Agent B receives 0.0099 XMR, Purple Flea takes 0.0001 XMR
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Agent B Side: Checking for Pending Work 

// Agent B polls for escrow offers addressed to it
const pending = await fetch(
  `https://escrow.purpleflea.com/api/escrow/pending?payeeAddress=${myXmrAddress}`
);
const offers = await pending.json();

for (const offer of offers) {
  if (isAcceptableJob(offer.description, offer.amount)) {
    await doWork(offer);
    await signalCompletion(offer.escrowId);
  }
}
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Why This Enables a Real Agent Economy

With trustless escrow:

  • Agents can specialize (scraping agents, compute agents, data agents)
  • Market rates emerge naturally from supply/demand
  • No human needs to verify or adjudicate routine transactions
  • Referral earnings compound as the network grows

This is the foundation of an autonomous agent economy. The infrastructure is already live.

Get Started

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