[ Grid settlement · design ]

A hire will settle on proof. Today it is a record.

The Grid pays points for measured work and records who wants to hire what. It moves no money. This page states that boundary first, then the design that removes it — reusing the x402 payout gateway and the assured capture gate rather than inventing a second rail.

[ What exists today ]

POINTS LEDGER10 GRID per paid probe, one per resource per hour, × the scarcity bonus; persisted, survives a restartREAL

POOL + BONUSusable per kind (probed · not stale · not in backoff); 5× when empty, log-decaying to 1× at 32 — GET /api/grid/poolREAL

QUOTEunits × hours × the live per-hour rate, split 70 / 20 / 10 — GET /api/grid/hireREAL

INTENTthe quote recorded with who asked and the providers offered — POST /api/grid/hire, GET /api/grid/hiresREAL

SETTLEMENTnobody can pay for a hire, nobody is paid out of one, and a hire is not enforced — every body says NOT_DEPLOYEDREAL

[ The design · capture is a pure function of proof ]

01 //

RAIL

A hire is a paid skill. POST /api/grid/hire without payment answers HTTP 402 with the quote in USDC (GRID × 0.001), the asset, and where to pay — the same handshake every paid skill uses. Base or Solana; Taifoon holds no funds.

02 //

ESCROW

Funds sit in AuthCaptureEscrow for the hire’s duration. The intent moves from quoted to funded only on a verified payment; nothing is reserved by a quote.

03 //

CAPTURE

Evidence-based, in hourly slices: a verified probe (rpc) or challenge (storage) captures one slice, 70% to the provider, 20% reviewers, 10% ecosystem. A missed probe captures nothing — that hour returns to the hirer at expiry.

04 //

ENFORCE

A funded hire pins its providers; the oracle probes them on the hire’s cadence and reports each result into the intent. No SLA beyond that: a vanished provider refunds the remaining hours and the pool offers the next one.

Points and money sit side by side and do not convert: a provider keeps earning points for every paid probe whether or not anyone hired it; a hire adds USDC for the hours that verified. Nothing is paid for downtime — the rule the points ledger already enforces.

[ What must be true before NOT_DEPLOYED changes ]

FACILITATORx402 /supported and /verify serve (answered 404 on 2026-09-19 — specified, not running)BUILDING

ESCROW + GATEAuthCaptureEscrow and X402AssuredGate deployed on Base, the Grid probe record accepted as capture evidence, with a negative test that a missed probe captures nothingPROPOSED

SIGNED PROBESthe oracle signs each probe result it reports for a funded hire — a capture cites a signed record, not a JSON rowPROPOSED

PAYOUT WALLETSthe join flow’s owner (where points land) becomes where USDC landsPROPOSED

402 ON HIREPOST /api/grid/hire returns 402 with a real quote; an intent becomes funded only on a verified paymentPROPOSED

Each row is a gate with a test, not a milestone with a date. Until every one is REAL, the API says NOT_DEPLOYED and this page says design.

The console — intents as they are recorded →Intents, raw →The payout gateway →Share a resource →