Building the agent-native stack with Privy, Allium, and x402
How programmable wallets and onchain data turn agents into economic actors
Debbie Soon
|Feb 25, 2026
Building agents on crypto rails? Start at agents.allium.so and provision a Privy wallet in minutes.
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AI agents are becoming increasingly capable economic actors. They can monitor portfolio exposure, trade in and out of positions, and interact directly with onchain protocols. As they move from assistants to operators, the underlying infrastructure becomes critical. Agents need systems that allow them to act both intelligently and safely.
An autonomous onchain agent requires three core capabilities: a wallet it can control programmatically, reliable access to real-time onchain data, and a way to pay for services without a human in the loop. Until recently, those components lived in separate worlds.
Wallets were designed for end users. APIs were gated behind accounts and dashboards. Payments were tied to subscriptions and traditional billing workflows. That structure works when the user is a person. It breaks down when the user is software.
The combination of Privy, Allium, and x402 closes that gap.
What x402 enables for agents
We’ve previously written about x402 as a machine-native payment primitive. Instead of provisioning accounts and managing API keys, services can be accessed on a pay-per-request basis. An agent attaches a USDC payment to a request and receives a response.
For agents, this aligns payment directly with execution. Infrastructure access becomes programmable and composable. Rather than signing up for services in advance, an agent pays for exactly what it consumes as part of its workflow.
Programmable wallets for agents
At Privy, we think about wallets as programmable accounts. For agents, the wallet is not an external interface. It is embedded into how they operate.
Programmable wallets allow agents to hold funds and authorize spend autonomously. Combined with x402, they enable a complete payment flow that runs end-to-end within defined policy guardrails. An agent can fund itself, attach payments to API calls, and manage balances without manual provisioning.
Wallet infrastructure is what allows agents to participate directly in economic systems.
Adding the data layer with Allium
If wallets allow agents to act, data allows them to decide.
Most meaningful onchain agents depend on structured, reliable state. Beyond a single price feed, they need wallet balances, transaction history, cross-chain exposure, token flows, and PnL across networks.
Allium provides real-time onchain data and analytics across 150+ chains through APIs built for programmatic access. Instead of scraping raw blockchain data or maintaining custom indexing infrastructure, agents can query structured state directly.
With x402 support, that data can be accessed in the same way agents handle everything else: programmatically and per request. An agent reads its configuration, provisions a wallet through Privy, funds it with USDC, and begins making paid requests to Allium APIs as part of its execution logic.
There are no API keys to provision and no dashboards to configure. The agent requests the data it needs, pays per call, and incorporates the response directly into its decision-making.
What this unlocks for builders
What previously required manual setup, account provisioning, and separate billing workflows can now be handled end-to-end in code. The agent does not authenticate into a service or manage API credentials. It attaches payment to a request, and that payment itself grants access. In other words, authentication is no longer gated by identity alone, but by code-based economic intent.
For teams building autonomous trading agents, risk monitors, research systems, or smart contract-aware execution tools, this stack provides a clean architectural foundation:
x402 enables per-request, machine-native payments
Privy provides the programmable wallet layer
Allium delivers structured, cross-chain onchain data
Together, they allow agents to hold funds, pay for services, access real-time state, and act on it within a single execution flow.
We’re already seeing developers experiment with this model. Some are building AI trading bots that execute and settle autonomously. Others are spinning up arbitrage strategies in minutes or creating tools to track and analyze whale activity across networks. The common thread is that identity, payments, and data access no longer require separate human workflows.
If you’re building agents on crypto rails, start by giving them a wallet so they can pay for the data they need. Explore agents.allium.so to get started, and integrate Privy wallet provisioning directly into your agent’s initialization flow.
