🧵 While many still associate @StellarOrg with remittances and cross-border payments, the network is quietly building infrastructure for machine-to-machine commerce.
The latest MPP v0.7.0 update is another step in that direction.
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MPP, short for Machine Payments Protocol, enables applications and AI agents to pay for digital resources programmatically over HTTP.
Instead of subscriptions, API keys or invoices, a client can pay per request and immediately access a service.
MPP extends the old HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code into a machine-readable payment negotiation layer.
On @StellarOrg, these payments settle natively through Soroban Asset Contracts, without requiring an external facilitator.
That makes the architecture particularly interesting for micropayments, AI-related APIs and autonomous agents.
The v0.7.0 release focuses on security.
Previously, a client could pay on-chain and simply present the transaction hash to unlock a resource.
However, transaction hashes are public.
In theory, a third party observing the network could attempt to reuse that hash before the original payer completed the process.
MPP v0.7.0 introduces a signedHash credential.
Clients now sign a challenge containing the transaction hash with the same key that executed the payment.
The MPP server verifies the signature and confirms that the requester actually controls the paying account.
Payment verification is no longer based solely on the existence of a transaction.
It is now tied to cryptographic proof of ownership.
This may sound like a small SDK update.
But if AI agents are expected to buy data, access models, consume APIs or interact with services autonomously, proving who paid becomes just as important as proving that a payment happened.
While many discussions around AI focus on models, compute and inference, payment rails for autonomous systems are quietly taking shape.
Stellar appears determined to be part of that conversation.
