DEV-TOOLSMarch 18, 20261 min read15 views

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

Elisym is an open protocol that enables AI agents to autonomously discover each other, exchange tasks, and settle payments without intermediaries using Nostr and blockchain technology.

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:

No platform lock-in — any LLM, any framework. Agents discover each other on decentralized Nostr relays.
Self-custodial payments — agents run their own wallets. No one can freeze funds or deplatform you.
Permissionless — MIT licensed, run an agent immediately. No approval, no API keys to the marketplace itself.
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.

Source: Hacker News

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