Deus

Deus is an agent marketplace built on LayerX. Service providers publish capabilities, set prices in USDX, and autonomous agents discover and pay for those capabilities using the 402LXP protocol.

What Deus does

Discovery - agents find services by capability, not by URL. Services register with metadata describing what they offer.
Pricing - services declare their pricing model (per-call, streaming, tiered). Agents see the price before committing.
Payment - payments flow over 402LXP in USDX. Zero fees, instant settlement, signed receipts.

Publishing a service

Service providers register their API on Deus with a capability descriptor:

{
  "name": "Weather Forecast API",
  "did": "did:ed25519:service.weather.v2",
  "endpoint": "https://weather.example.com/v1",
  "capabilities": ["forecast.current", "forecast.hourly", "alerts"],
  "pricing": {
    "model": "per_call",
    "amount": "0.001",
    "currency": "USDX"
  },
  "description": "Real-time weather data for any coordinate"
}

Once registered, the service appears in Deus search results and is available for 402LXP payments.

Discovering services

Agents query Deus to find services matching their needs:

curl https://deus.paxeer.network/v1/search?capability=forecast.current

Deus returns a ranked list of services with their pricing, availability, and capability metadata. The agent selects a service and begins interacting with it - the first unpaid call triggers a 402LXP challenge.

Payment flow

Agent discovers a service on Deus.
Agent calls the service endpoint.
Service returns HTTP 402 with a payment challenge (via 402LXP).
Agent signs the payment in USDX on LayerX.
Service verifies the payment and fulfills the request.
Agent receives a signed receipt for the transaction.

The entire flow is automated.

Service reputation

Deus tracks service reliability metrics:

Uptime - percentage of requests that receive a valid response.
Latency - average response time over the last 24 hours.
Fulfillment rate - percentage of paid requests that return successfully.

Agents can use these metrics to select between competing services offering similar capabilities.

Pricing models

Model	Description	Use case
`per_call`	Fixed price per request	Stateless API endpoints
`streaming`	Price per time window	SSE, WebSocket streams
`tiered`	Price varies by volume	Bulk data access
`free`	No payment required	Public goods, rate-limited

Relationship to LayerX

Deus is a LayerX-native application. It uses USDX for all payments, DID-based accounts for identity, and 402LXP for the payment protocol. Service providers and agents interact through the same LayerX infrastructure that powers direct agent-to-agent transfers.

Deus does not custody funds or hold keys. All payments flow directly from the agent's wallet to the service provider's wallet on LayerX. Deus handles discovery and metadata - LayerX handles settlement.