Answers before you integrate

smidgen.io is a micropayment paywall for websites. You mark premium content, visitors pay a few cents in USDC on Base or Solana, and the money goes straight to your wallet. Humans pay in the browser; bots and AI agents get an HTTP 402 payment challenge on the same URL. Agents can discover those URLs via your catalog and Coinbase Bazaar.

Publishers, bloggers, researchers, and API owners who want to charge for articles, notes, or endpoints without a subscription. If scrapers or agents hit your pages unpaid, smidgen can return HTTP 402 on your domain when you install an adapter (WordPress, Next.js, nginx, and more).

Install a free wallet, then paste its address into your smidgen project payout settings. For Base (Ethereum-compatible): MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet — create an account, switch the network to Base, and copy your 0x… address. For Solana: Phantom — create a wallet and copy your address. You do not need to “deposit” into smidgen; we never hold your funds. Keep a little ETH (Base) or SOL for network fees if you move USDC later; receiving USDC usually only needs the wallet address.

Yes for paid unlocks today — they connect MetaMask (Base) or Phantom (Solana) in the paywall and approve a small USDC payment. Many readers already have one; others can install MetaMask or Phantom in a minute and buy USDC with a card inside those apps. The demo pages on smidgen.io show the exact checkout flow.

USDC is a US dollar–backed stablecoin. One USDC is meant to equal one US dollar. Readers pay in USDC; you receive USDC in your wallet. You can hold it or cash out later through an exchange or on-ramp that supports Base or Solana.

HTTP 402 Payment Required is a standard status code for “pay to continue.” smidgen uses the open x402 protocol so bots and agents can read the price, pay in USDC, and retry the same URL. Humans usually see a blur or hard-locked teaser and a wallet checkout instead of raw JSON.

x402 is an open protocol on HTTP 402: a client requests a URL, gets payment terms, pays USDC, and retries the same URL. smidgen is a paywall that speaks it — humans checkout in the browser; agents pay the 402 on your domain. Longer explainer: https://smidgen.io/blog/what-is-x402

Two layers. smidgen builds an agent catalog from your paywall rules — a machine-readable list of which URLs accept x402. That file is an ARD catalog (see “What is ARD?”). Serve it at /.well-known/ai-catalog.json (WordPress can publish this when you sync). Crawlers follow Agentmap in robots.txt. Separately, Coinbase Bazaar can list a URL after the first successful payment. You don’t submit a form; a real settle is the listing.

ARD (Agent Resource Directory) is a convention for publishing a machine-readable catalog of what a site offers agents. smidgen generates yours from enabled paywall rules and you serve it at /.well-known/ai-catalog.json. robots.txt includes an Agentmap line so crawlers know where to look. Paid entries include price and that the URL speaks x402; docs pages are marked as free. Unlike Coinbase Bazaar, the catalog lives on your domain — you control it. Live example: https://smidgen.io/.well-known/ai-catalog.json (it points at nested catalogs on the Next.js and WordPress demos).

Bazaar is Coinbase’s public directory of x402-paid resources. Agents search it by keyword or URL. smidgen attaches Bazaar metadata to every 402 and settle, so your publisher URL can show up — not an internal gate. Our Next.js and WordPress demos are listed today: search query=smidgen on the CDP discovery API, or start from /integrations/agents.

Easy blur puts the premium HTML in the page and hides it with CSS until payment — fastest setup, but unpaid View Source can still show the text. Hard lock means your server only sends a teaser until an unlock validates; the secret body never ships unpaid. Hard lock needs WordPress, Next.js, PHP, or another dynamic origin — static HTML alone cannot hard-lock. Both modes can still return HTTP 402 to bots when an adapter is installed on your domain.

No. smidgen is non-custodial. Settlements go to the payout wallet you configure. On the Free plan a small platform fee may apply on-chain; paid plans are designed for 0% platform fee when subscriptions launch.

Yes — after you create the account yourself. There is no signup API. Sign in at /login, then your coding agent runs npx @smidgendotio/cli login (you click Authorize) and npx @smidgendotio/cli init. Full spec: /integrations/publisher-agents.md. The agent cannot change payout wallets on existing projects. Paying bots that buy content are different — they use /integrations/agents and never need an account.

1) Open smidgen.io and start for free (email magic link or wallet login). If an AI is helping you, you still do this step — then it runs npx @smidgendotio/cli login and init (guide: /integrations/publisher-agents.md). 2) Create a project and add your site URL. 3) Paste a Base or Solana payout wallet. 4) Add the script tag (or WordPress / Next adapter) and mark content with data-x402-paywall. 5) Curl your page without browser headers — you should see HTTP 402 when an adapter is installed. 6) Serve /.well-known/ai-catalog.json from your rules (WordPress: Sync rules & agent catalog). The first paid unlock can list the URL on Coinbase Bazaar. Try the live demos first if you want to see the flow before integrating.

Yes. Visit /demos or /integrations/agents. Curl a live URL for HTTP 402, copy TypeScript or Python to pay USDC and retry, or open the same link in a browser. Search Coinbase Bazaar for smidgen — the live demos are listed. That is the same path your readers and agents will use on your site.

Browser snippet for any HTML site; official paths for WordPress, Next.js, PHP, and reverse proxies (nginx, Caddy, Apache). Cloudflare Workers are optional. Coding agents that set up your project: /integrations/publisher-agents. Paying agents: copy-paste TypeScript and Python at /integrations/agents. See /integrations for publisher setup.

You can start free. Free includes a project, paywall rules, and direct USDC payouts (one chain at a time). A small platform fee may apply on Free. Pro and Business (multi-chain, 0% platform fee) are listed on /pricing and coming soon for self-serve upgrade.

Email website@smidgen.io. Include your site URL and stack (WordPress, Next.js, static HTML, etc.) if you need integration help. You can also open /contact on the website.