Kite Mainnet Launched, Introducing Agent-Centric Payments Layer

BlockBeats News, April 30th, Kite, the payment infrastructure for the AI Agent Economy, announced the official launch of its Mainnet, with the Kite Treasury covering network fees during the bootstrap phase, enabling users to interact with the network without needing to deal with gas.

Simultaneous with the Mainnet release is the public launch of the Kite Agent Passport, serving as the authorization and payment control layer for Agents. Users can sign a session with controlled boundaries using a passkey (including a single transaction limit, total budget, expiration date, allowed assets, and payment methods). Agents autonomously execute tasks within these constraints, without requiring users to provide their bank accounts, credit cards, or private keys. All actions are logged in a unified activity log for easy auditing.

Kite adopts a "Three-Tier in One" architecture: the bottom settlement layer is an EVM-compatible L1 that natively supports stablecoin settlements, catering to high-frequency, low-value, Agent-driven payment scenarios; the middle core Agent service is hosted by the Passport, handling identity, delegation, and risk control; the top Agent interface layer allows mainstream Agents to directly plug into the runtime.

On the application layer, use cases such as online shopping have already been deployed, with API payments settled via the x402 protocol. The Kite team explicitly stated that they are not pursuing Total Value Locked (TVL) and will instead publicly measure progress based on three metrics: total transaction volume, monthly active Passport count, and total settlement amount.

Currently, users can register an account at agentpassport.ai, register an Agent, and initiate bounded delegation authorization. The initial batch of supported Agents can automatically complete tasks such as online shopping, API payment calls, cross-service multi-step processes, and more.