Stablecoin payments
Pay for inference, compute and data in stablecoins on Tenzro Network 1: Bridge.xyz wallets, x402 and MPP, and network gas paid in stablecoins.
Many buyers in the Machine Economy think in dollars, not in a network token. Tenzro Network 1 lets people, agents and machines hold stablecoins, pay for services in them and even pay network gas in them. TNZO still does the work underneath: it pays every network fee and settles every transaction on the ledger. The stablecoin is what the buyer holds and spends; TNZO is what the network settles in.
Stablecoin wallets through Bridge.xyz
Stablecoin wallets on Tenzro are provided through Bridge.xyz, the stablecoin wallet rail. A wallet is linked to your Tenzro account and your DID, so it shows up next to your TNZO balance in the console wallet and in the SDK.
- Linked to your identity. The wallet belongs to the same account as your TNZO balance. Human accounts are rooted in a passkey, machine accounts in a TPM 2.0 or Secure Enclave key. See Hardware-rooted keys.
- Authorised by your keys. Payments from the wallet are authorised by a signature from your account, like any other payment on the network.
- Funded through Bridge.xyz. You add and withdraw stablecoins through the funding options Bridge.xyz offers for your region.
An agent can be given its own stablecoin wallet under a machine DID. Its delegation scope sets how much it may spend per transaction and per day, and over which protocols. See Payments.
Paying for services in stablecoins
Every paid route on a Tenzro node accepts stablecoins over the two open HTTP 402 protocols:
| Protocol | How the stablecoin is paid |
|---|---|
| x402 | The 402 response lists stablecoin requirements next to TNZO ones. The buyer signs a transfer authorisation, or a ceiling for metered upto payments, and the node's own facilitator verifies and settles it. |
| MPP | The buyer opens a session capped in a stablecoin and draws it down call by call. |
For example, an agent calling POST /v1/chat/completions without an API key receives a 402 that includes a stablecoin option. It signs for the ceiling it is willing to pay, the node serves the completion, meters the tokens and captures only what was used.
A provider can price in TNZO, in a stablecoin or in both. Providers set prices with the same tools they use for TNZO pricing, and the compute price index gives both sides a common reference. See Compute claims and price index.
Paying gas in stablecoins
On Network 1 you can pay network gas in a stablecoin instead of TNZO. The account does not need to hold TNZO first. This matters most for agents and new users: a machine funded only with stablecoins can transact from its first action.
How it works:
- The transaction's fee is computed as usual, in TNZO, from gas used and the current base fee.
- The payer settles that fee in a supported stablecoin at the conversion rate the network applies.
- The network settles the fee in TNZO. The EIP-1559-style base fee is burned and split with the treasury exactly as for a fee paid in TNZO.
Gas paid in a stablecoin burns under its own governance-set rate, adjusted only by explicit governance proposal. Paying in another asset is therefore never a way around the base-fee burn. See Token economics.
For smart accounts, stablecoin gas is also available through a paymaster: the paymaster pays the fee in TNZO and recovers it from the account in a stablecoin. See Paymaster.
Settlement underneath
Whichever asset the buyer holds, settlement looks the same to the network:
- The payment is a signed transaction from the paying account, ordered by consensus and final once its block is certified.
- The receipt the buyer gets names the settlement transaction, so it can be checked by anyone.
- Network fees are paid in TNZO. TNZO is governed by the Tenzro Foundation, and its supply is fixed at 1,000,000,000.
Operators who are paid in stablecoins receive them in their own wallet. Operators who want TNZO for bonding can hold both.
When to use what
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Pay per request for inference, storage or data in dollars | x402 or MPP with a stablecoin |
| Let an agent run on a dollar budget | A Bridge.xyz wallet under the agent's machine DID, with a delegation scope |
| Send a first transaction without holding TNZO | Gas paid in a stablecoin |
| Sponsor your users' gas entirely | Paymaster |
| Charge your users by card and settle on Tenzro | Developer payments |
| Let an agent buy from a merchant checkout | Agent commerce (ACP) |