Dev.to
7/23/2026
Building a machine-payable API for AI agents: 8 weeks, $0.15 volume, zero external buyers
Original: I built a machine-payable API for AI agents and made $0.00 from strangers. Here's every number.
Short summary
A developer built token-risk.com, a machine-payable API on Base where AI agents pay $0.01 in USDC per call for ERC-20 token risk reports. After eight weeks, total volume is $0.15 across 15 transactions—zero external buyers. The honest write-up covers two production incidents (a metadata length overflow and an HTTPS URL issue) and the core lesson: failures live at boundaries your tests can't see.
- •Shipped a pay-per-call API for AI agents on Base—$0.01 USDC per call, zero external buyers after 8 weeks
- •Two production incidents: metadata string overflow silently rejected payments, and HTTP vs HTTPS URL rejected by discovery layer
- •Key lesson: failures live at integration boundaries tests can't see; paid mainnet probes are now a post-deploy checklist item
Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.
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