Paid by
the call.
A package that charges a fraction of a cent each time it runs. The smallest unit of code, finally sellable — settled on Arc in USDC, in under half a second, with no gas.
- $0.000001
- smallest
- <500ms
- settlement
- $0
- gas
Every subscription is an admission that the real unit was too small to sell.
For as long as a payment couldn't be smaller than thirty cents after fees, a single function call was never worth charging for. So the whole industry bundled a month of them and charged ten dollars.
Nanopayments remove the floor. Value as small as $0.000001, gas paid in USDC, settled in under half a second on Arc. The smallest unit of code becomes sellable for the first time — and the thing buying it is increasingly an agent that pays per call, thousands of times an hour.
Publish a metered package
Wrap your package with the Quanta meter, set a sub-cent per-call price and an Arc address. Installs stay free.
Consumer pays per call
On each invocation the consumer's wallet signs an off-chain authorization — zero gas — and Circle Gateway batches it.
Arc settles to you
Gateway settles the batch on Arc in USDC, straight to the author's wallet, with a receipt on every call.
// the consumer's runtime — each call clears a nanopayment on Arc import { insight } from "quanta-insights" await insight("arc") // → pays $0.0005 USDC, then returns
Every economy mints a smallest coin.
Struck so ordinary people could pay for everyday things. Mints kept shrinking the coin until it was too small to strike. Software has no such floor — so the quanta becomes the nanopayment.
The smallest coin of the Greek world — a hundredth of a drachma.
The smallest everyday bronze; it bought a turn at the public baths.
Round bronze cash with a square hole; a thousand made one guàn.
The quanta reborn for machines — value as small as $0.000001, cleared in under half a second.
Four primitives, settled on one chain.
- Arc
- Circle's L1 where USDC is the gas token. Sub-second finality makes sub-cent payments economical for the first time.
- Circle Gateway
- Batches many signed off-chain authorizations into one on-chain settlement — gas-free for the payer.
- x402
- HTTP 402 Payment Required. Every package call is priced and settled on access.
- USDC
- The digital dollar. Authors receive settled USDC directly to their wallet on Arc.
Get paid per call.
- — Publish as normal; installs stay free.
- — Set a sub-cent price per invocation.
- — USDC lands on Arc, with a receipt on every call.
Spend on a budget.
- — Install the package, fund a wallet on Arc.
- — Pay per call, capped by a USDC budget.
- — Real sub-cent volume, batched and settled live.
- Isn't a single install too cheap to charge for?
- An install is. A call isn't — when you meter per invocation, an agent that hits your package thousands of times an hour pays thousands of times. The floor was never the value; it was the fee.
- How do consumers pay without gas?
- They deposit USDC into the Gateway wallet once, then sign each payment off-chain at zero gas. Circle Gateway batches the authorizations and settles them on Arc.
- What does the author do?
- Publish a package wrapped with the Quanta meter, set a sub-cent per-call price and an Arc address. Installs stay free; you earn per use.
- Who is the buyer?
- Any consumer of the package — increasingly, an AI agent running it on a USDC budget, paying per call as it works.