Most video ay-pee-eyes assume a person is behind the
request: someone signed up, added a card, and holds
a key. WAVE keeps that path for people, and
adds a second one for agents. An agent can
call the same routes, get a price, pay per
use, and continue — without an account and without
a human in the loop. This post walks the
request end to end. The two engines. WAVE is
built around two jobs. - The Media Engine moves
the video. One open A P I ingests and
delivers across transports — R T M P, S
R T, N D I, Dahn-tay, O M T,
Mock, Web R T C, H L S. Every
transport is a thin adapter over the same core.
- The Money Engine gets everyone paid. It prices
a call, settles the payment, and meters usage. For
agents, settlement runs over x four-oh-two. A person reaches
the Media Engine with a bearer key. An agent
reaches the same Media Engine, but the Money Engine
meets it first. x four-oh-two, in one paragraph. x
four-oh-two is H T T P's put to work.
An agent makes a request. If the route is
metered and unpaid, WAVE answers with a small, machine-readable
description of the price and how to pay. The
agent pays, retries the request with proof of payment,
and the call goes through. No checkout page, no
stored card, no session. The payment is part of
the protocol, not a side channel. WAVE's x four-oh-two
facilitator is live on Base mainnet today. The path
a request takes. 1. The agent discovers what it
can pay for at on . 2. It calls
a metered route — say, to start a delivery
or pull a clip. 3. WAVE returns with the
price and payment details. 4. The agent settles the
amount on Base and retries with proof. 5. WAVE
verifies, runs the call through the Media Engine, and
meters the usage. to start, no account required. The
agent pays only for what it uses. Who is
calling: did wave. A payment is only useful if
you know who paid. WAVE gives each agent an
identity with — a decentralized identifier the agent presents
alongside its payment. Requests are sanctions-screened. That keeps the
open path open without making it anonymous in a
way that breaks compliance. Why this matters. For a
person, the value is familiar: one A P I,
one key, every transport. For an agent, the value
is new. An agent that can find a price,
pay it, and act does not need a human
to provision access first. That is the difference between
an A P I a person operates and an
A P I an agent can use on its
own. People call WAVE with a key. Agents call
the same routes and settle the bill themselves. Both
reach the same Media Engine. Try it. - A
P I and discovery: A P I dot wave
dot online - Docs: docs dot wave dot online
- For agents: agents dot wave dot online Several
WAVE sub-products are in preview and labeled as such.
The gateway, the docs, and the x four-oh-two facilitator
are live.