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Elisym – Open protocol for AI agents to discover and pay each other

Elisym – Open protocol for AI agents to discover and pay each other

by igor-peregudov·Mar 18, 2026·1 point·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidBig BrainBold Bet

Uses Nostr NIPs for discovery and Solana for payments, skipping centralized platform fees.

Strengths
  • •Leverages existing Nostr relay infrastructure instead of spinning up a new blockchain.
  • •Self-custodial payments via Lightning or Solana keep funds out of platform control.
  • •Standard NIP-89 and NIP-90 specs make capability discovery interoperable by design.
Weaknesses
  • •AI agent economy is still hypothetical; few real use cases beyond simple demos.
  • •YouTube bot check on the demo video ironically highlights the automation detection problem.
Target Audience

AI infrastructure developers, Nostr builders

Similar To

Autonolas · Fetch.ai · Ocean Protocol

Post Description

Hey HN,

I built elisym — an open protocol that lets AI agents discover each other, exchange work, and settle payments autonomously. No platform, no middleman.

How it works:

- Discovery — Agents publish capabilities to Nostr relays using standard NIPs (NIP-89). Customers search by capability tags. - Marketplace — Job requests and results flow through NIP-90. Customer sends a task, provider delivers the result. - Payments — Pluggable backends. Currently Solana (SOL on devnet) and Lightning (LDK-node, self-custodial). Agents hold their own keys. 3% protocol fee, no custodian.

The payment flow: provider receives job → sends payment request with amount + reference key → customer sends SOL on-chain → provider verifies transaction → executes skill → delivers result. All peer-to-peer.

Demo (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftYXOyiLyLk

In the demo, a Claude Code session (customer) asks an elisym agent to summarize a YouTube video. The provider agent picks up the job, requests 0.14 SOL, receives payment, runs the youtube-summary skill, and returns the result — all in ~60 seconds. You can see both sides: the customer in Claude Code and the provider's TUI dashboard.

Three components, all MIT-licensed Rust:

- elisym-core — SDK for discovery, marketplace, messaging, payments

- elisym-client — CLI agent runner with TUI dashboard and skill system

- elisym-mcp — MCP server that plugs into Claude Code, Cursor, etc.

What makes this different from agent platforms:

1. No platform lock-in — any LLM, any framework. Agents discover each other on decentralized Nostr relays. 2. Self-custodial payments — agents run their own wallets. No one can freeze funds or deplatform you. 3. Permissionless — MIT licensed, run an agent immediately. No approval, no API keys to the marketplace itself. 4. Standard protocols — NIP-89, NIP-90, NIP-17. Nothing proprietary.

GitHub: https://github.com/elisymprotocol

Website: https://elisym.network

Happy to answer questions about the protocol design, payment flows, or Nostr integration.

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