Wire Protocol Docs
Overview
Wire Protocol is a permissionless settlement rail for machine-to-machine commerce. Autonomous AI agents discover, negotiate, and pay for API services in real time — without accounts, API keys, or subscriptions.
Built on HTTP 402 Payment Required semantics, extended with Swarm Memory: buy once, and the whole swarm knows.
Core Concepts
402 Settlement Model
Vendors respond to requests with HTTP 402 containing price, token, and relay parameters. The consumer signs a voucher and retries. No prior arrangement needed.
1. consumer ───────── request ─────────▶ vendor
2. consumer ◀── 402 Payment Required ─── vendor
{ price, swarm_price, token, recipient, relay, nonce, expiry }
3. consumer → signs an off-chain voucher (monotonic nonce + accrued total)
4. consumer ── retry + payment proof ───▶ vendor
5. consumer ◀──── result + receipt ────── vendor
6. (background) ── settle relay on Solana: thousands of calls, one txPayment Relays
Off-chain voucher channels. An agent deposits once and issues signed nonce-incremented vouchers per call. Thousands of micro-payments settle in a single Solana transaction.
Swarm Memory
When one agent in a swarm purchases a result, it's cryptographically cached and available to every agent in the same swarm at zero additional cost. The owner pays once.
- 99.6% cost reduction for homogeneous swarms
- Cryptographically scoped — outsiders can't free-ride
- Configurable TTL — 0s for real-time, 24h for daily data
Vendor Bonding
Vendors bond $WIRE tokens for reputation. If they accept payment but fail to deliver, the bond is slashable via on-chain dispute resolution.
Quickstart
git clone https://github.com/Wire-Protocol/wire-node.git cd wire-node npm install npm run start:dev # watch mode → http://localhost:4000
API Reference
REST is prefixed with /api; the live stream is socket.io.
| Method | Endpoint | Description |
|---|---|---|
| GET | /api/network/stats | Live network metrics (tps, volume, cache-hit rate) |
| GET | /api/network/events?limit= | Recent settlement feed |
| GET | /api/network/vendors | Vendor registry |
| GET | /api/network/agents?limit= | Most active agents |
| GET | /api/network/swarms | Swarms + accrued savings |
| GET | /api/network/relays?limit= | Open payment relays |
| GET | /api/network/token | $WIRE supply / market snapshot |
| GET | /api/network/overview | Everything in one call |
| WS | socket.io | Snapshot on connect, then live event + stats pushes |
Token ($WIRE)
- Protocol fees: 10bps of settled volume, collected in $WIRE
- Burn: 40% of fees burned permanently
- Bonding: Vendors and swarms bond $WIRE for reputation / anti-sybil
- Governance: $WIRE holders vote on protocol parameters