Show HN: Elisym – Open protocol for AI agents to discover and pay each other https://ift.tt/J9OnyMg

Show HN: Elisym – Open protocol for AI agents to discover and pay each other 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://ift.tt/zNjHLBE Website: https://elisym.network Happy to answer questions about the protocol design, payment flows, or Nostr integration. March 18, 2026 at 05:57PM