Investor overview

Commerce infrastructure for the autonomous buyer economy

Cortex is building the trust and transaction layer agents need to buy from merchants: discovery, payment policy, quote commitments, receipts, disputes, reputation signals, and machine-readable settlement data on Base.

Product overview Live dashboard

Investment thesis

Agents need commerce infrastructure, not just wallets.

Network wedge

Base

Payment scope

Transfers, swaps, facilitators, x402

Protocol fee today

0 bps, instrumented

First buyer

Agent platforms + API/data merchants

Traction

Live on Base Sepolia today

Pulled live from the Cortex hosted API. Early testnet activity — small numbers, real data. Click into any row on the protocol dashboard for the full receipt + merchant detail.

Live network

Base Sepolia

Active merchants

Active services

Receipts settled

Settled volume

Protocol fees

0 (0 bps today)

Want to feel it end-to-end? 10-minute Buy from Cortex walkthrough — register a merchant, set an agent policy, commit a quote, pay, record receipt + fulfillment. Or read the runnable scripts at ops/sdk-examples/.

Market

Autonomous buying creates a new merchant problem

AI agents are moving from chat and workflow automation into purchasing, subscriptions, API calls, compute, data, and financial actions.

Merchants need a way to accept autonomous buyers without treating every agent like an anonymous bot or unmanaged wallet.

Payment rails like wallets, stablecoins, swaps, and x402 are improving, but commerce still needs discovery, policy, receipts, dispute signals, and reputation.

Product

Cortex makes agent transactions verifiable

Merchant and service registry

Onchain merchant, payout, service, facilitator, metadata, catalog, and capability records.

Quote commitments

Canonical payment terms that bind merchant, service, agent, token, rail, amount, nonce, resource, terms, and fee fields.

Commerce policy layer

Merchant-specific or any-merchant budgets for transfers, swaps, facilitator-mediated payments, and x402 authorizations.

Receipts, licenses, and disputes

Settlement records, result hashes, machine-readable usage rights, refund/dispute signals, and reputation inputs.

Reconciliation and analytics

Indexed protocol metrics plus quote, payment, settlement, receipt, fulfillment, policy, and dispute matching.

Agent interfaces

REST API, MCP tools, dashboard, SDK examples, and hosted transaction-preparation flows.

Why now

Payments are improving faster than commerce trust

Wallets and x402 can move value. Cortex focuses on the surrounding trust system: who is selling, what service was promised, what the agent was allowed to spend, what payment terms were accepted, what was delivered, and what happened when a transaction failed.

Payment

Policy-aware commerce

Directory listing

Verifiable merchant and service state

API response

Receipt, result hash, and dispute trail

Generic wallet

Delegated agent budget and replay protection

Ecosystem fit

How Cortex composes with the Base + Coinbase stack

Cortex is built to plug into the standards the Base ecosystem is already pushing — not to replace them. Each integration is graded on what's shipped today vs. what's queued.

Base Sepolia now, Base mainnet next

Live testnet

Cortex contracts, hosted API, indexer, dashboard, onboarding, purchase simulator, docs, and MCP tooling are live on Base Sepolia. Mainnet follows after pilot traffic validates merchant and agent demand.

x402 and signed payment rails

Integrated

The hosted API canonicalizes x402 payment requirements, binds them into quote hashes, verifies EIP-3009 and Permit2 authorization shapes, and records signed payment usage against policy.

Coinbase Smart Wallet

Compatible today

Cortex connects via wagmi v2 + RainbowKit with Coinbase Wallet support. Smart-wallet users can register merchants, register agents, set policies, and commit quotes directly. Cortex's own PolicyAccount is optional.

Agent runtimes and MCP

Tools live

The Cortex MCP server exposes production commerce tools for listing merchants/services, checking policy, preparing purchases, preparing setup transactions, reading licenses, and checking reconciliation.

Business model

Monetization starts with infrastructure, not a tax

Hosted protocol API

Managed indexing, APIs, dashboards, alerts, and developer tooling for teams building agent commerce.

Merchant verification

Verified merchant/service profiles, richer discovery placement, and trust/reporting tools.

Facilitator routing

Commercial relationships around payment facilitation, settlement reliability, and payment acceptance.

Protocol fees later

Fee fields are instrumented today at 0 bps, giving a clean future path once usage and trust exist.

Roadmap

Protocol first, chain optional

Now

Hosted Base Sepolia protocol with onboarding, dashboards, API, MCP tools, purchase simulator, licenses, disputes, and reconciliation.

Pilot merchant/API-provider integrations, stronger agent wallet integrations, richer x402 server role, and repeatable external tester onboarding.

Then

Mainnet Base deployment, reputation scoring, privacy controls, dispute workflow UX, facilitator partnerships, and production-grade ops.

Option

If activity warrants it, evolve selected primitives into predeploys or chain-native modules.

The ask

Turn the live testnet into pilot usage and Base mainnet readiness

The next milestone is external pilot traffic: real merchant/API-provider services, agent-driven purchases through API or MCP, policy-controlled spending, receipts, licenses, disputes, and enough recurring activity to justify Base mainnet launch.