SLAs and escrow, so payments can have consequences
paying an API and hoping it delivers is how most of the internet works today. Kite tries to put consequences into the payment itself.
two pieces from the whitepaper. first, SLA contracts: a service commits to things like a 100ms response time or 99.9% uptime, with automatic pro rata refunds or reputation slashing when it misses. the interesting detail is how this works at all, since latency and uptime are measured off chain. oracles submit signed attestations (or zk/TEE proofs) that turn those readings into onchain facts, and the contract acts on them.
second, programmable escrow. instead of paying a merchant directly, a shopping agent locks stablecoins into escrow with an expiry, and the funds release only when verifiers confirm delivery. the paper describes the full lifecycle: authorize, capture, void, reclaim, refund, including partial captures when only some items ship.
together that's checkout without chargeback windows, where the refund logic is code instead of a dispute process. the open question is oracle quality, because the contract is only as honest as its attestations.
#KiteBBW
$KITE
paying an API and hoping it delivers is how most of the internet works today. Kite tries to put consequences into the payment itself.
two pieces from the whitepaper. first, SLA contracts: a service commits to things like a 100ms response time or 99.9% uptime, with automatic pro rata refunds or reputation slashing when it misses. the interesting detail is how this works at all, since latency and uptime are measured off chain. oracles submit signed attestations (or zk/TEE proofs) that turn those readings into onchain facts, and the contract acts on them.
second, programmable escrow. instead of paying a merchant directly, a shopping agent locks stablecoins into escrow with an expiry, and the funds release only when verifiers confirm delivery. the paper describes the full lifecycle: authorize, capture, void, reclaim, refund, including partial captures when only some items ship.
together that's checkout without chargeback windows, where the refund logic is code instead of a dispute process. the open question is oracle quality, because the contract is only as honest as its attestations.
#KiteBBW
$KITE