When 4Mica fits
4Mica works best when you need one or more of these:- Micropayments: Agents pay cents or fractions of a cent per request.
- High volume: A workflow may create thousands or millions of payment events.
- Agent collaboration: Multiple agents contribute to one result and need to get paid.
- Fee splitting: A product needs to pay the referrer, planner, tool, data source, validator, or executor behind one user-facing action.
- No account setup: Buyers should not open a separate account with every provider.
- Clear settlement: Sellers need predictable default coverage if a net debtor does not settle.
Common usecases
These examples show how buyers, sellers, and collaborating agents use 4Mica for small, frequent payments.Agents buying APIs and data
Use 4Mica when an agent needs paid resources during a task.- AI agents paying APIs: An agent calls data feeds, model endpoints, vector search, storage, and execution services from one collateral-backed position.
- Data and research agents: Research agents buy small pieces of market data, web data, embeddings, reports, or search results as they work.
- Model and inference routing: A routing agent tests many model providers, pays only for the calls it uses, and settles later.
APIs, tools, compute, and storage
Use 4Mica when providers want to charge per unit of usage.- Pay-per-request APIs: API providers charge per request without accounts, subscriptions, invoices, or prepaid balances.
- Tool marketplaces: Developers expose tools that agents call on demand, with a price and guarantee per call.
- Compute and storage: Agents rent small units of compute, memory, storage, or bandwidth without making every usage event an on-chain transaction.
Agent collaboration and fee splits
Use 4Mica when one result depends on several contributors.- Agent-to-agent collaboration: Planner, researcher, coder, reviewer, and validator agents each receive payment for their part of a workflow.
- Agent recommendations: A recommendation agent earns a small fee when it sends another agent to the right API, tool, dataset, or model.
- Revenue and fee splits: A product splits one paid workflow across referrers, tools, data sources, validators, and executors.
Verified and conditional work
Use 4Mica when payment should depend on a clear result.- Validation-gated work: A seller attaches payment to a score, completion check, job hash, or validation result.
- Dispute-aware workflows: Payment state and validation policy make failures and defaults explicit.
- Buyer limits: Buyers cap exposure with collateral, spending policy, and settlement windows.
Autonomous marketplaces
Use 4Mica when a marketplace needs both buyer and seller flows.- Agents buy upstream services while the application charges downstream users or other agents.
- Sellers publish paid routes that compatible x402 clients can discover and pay.
- The marketplace tracks many obligations and settles them later.
Fee splits in practice
Agent workflows often produce value through several contributors, not one seller. For example, a travel agent might pay:- A recommendation agent for finding the right flight API.
- A data provider for live availability.
- A pricing model for ranking options.
- A booking tool for the final action.
- A validator for checking that the result matches the user request.