AOTrust Uses x402 and NEAR Blockchain to Notarize AI Agent Outputs for $0.01

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A new notarization service called AOTrust allows developers to cryptographically prove that an AI agent produced a specific output at a given point in time. The system works by hashing the agent's artifact and submitting it to an API that charges a flat fee of $0.01 in USDC via the x402 payment protocol on Base Layer 2. No account, API key, or signup is required — payment is handled inline through an HTTP 402 response cycle using EIP-3009 authorization. The service returns a 239-byte Provenance Data Record (PDR) signed with Ed25519, which is then anchored to the NEAR blockchain via a Merkle root for tamper-evident timestamping. The entire notarization process completes in two to five seconds, and the PDR can be verified independently without making any additional API calls.

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