CELO MAINNET · LIVE✦ANSWERS SERVED: 2✦PAID TO CREATORS: $0.02 USDC✦AVG ANSWER COST: $0.01✦REGISTERED SOURCES: 1✦PAY-PER-PROMPT · NO SUBSCRIPTIONS✦NATIVE USDC · ERC-8021 TAGGED SETTLEMENTS✦

Documentation

Everything you need to know about using ThothPay, whether you are researching topics or registering your own intellectual property.

What is ThothPay?

ThothPay is a decentralized AI research terminal designed to fix the creator compensation problem in generative AI. Currently, AI models are trained on millions of articles, but the original authors receive no compensation when their work is used to generate answers.

ThothPay changes this by introducing Pay-Per-Prompt Citations. When our AI agent synthesizes an answer using a registered knowledge base, it explicitly cites its sources and the ThothPay treasury instantly executes USDC nanopayments to the original creators on Celo Mainnet.

For Researchers (Users)

1. Connect any EVM Wallet

ThothPay works with any standard EVM wallet — MetaMask, the Celo extension, Rabby, WalletConnect, and more. Your wallet address is your identity; there are no custodial accounts or seed phrases held by us.

  • Click Connect Wallet in the top navigation bar.
  • Pick your wallet and approve the connection.
  • Sign a free message to prove ownership — no transaction is sent.
  • You are now authenticated! Your wallet address is your identity.

2. Get USDC

Research runs on Celo Mainnet, so you need USDC on Celo to pay for AI prompts.

  • Bridge or buy USDC on Celo Mainnet (network id 42220).
  • Your wallet balance shows in the top navigation bar once connected.

3. Ask the AI

Once your wallet is funded, you can query the AI. You set a "Max Budget" for the prompt (e.g., $0.50).

  • Your wallet sends the budget as USDC to the ThothPay treasury — a plain transfer you sign once.
  • The AI retrieves relevant articles from our vector database and writes an answer.
  • Based on which articles were actually cited, the treasury settles the payment, distributing the exact citation fees to the respective authors.
  • Anything unused is refunded straight back to your wallet.

For Creators (Authors)

1. Universal Identity (EVM Wallet)

There are no separate "user" or "creator" accounts, and absolutely no passwords. Your EVM wallet is your entire identity. The moment you connect your wallet via the navbar, our backend automatically maps your address to your creator profile. You never have to manually configure payment settings!

2. Verify Ownership (Required Before Registering)

Before you can register an article, you must prove you actually control where it lives. This exists so nobody else can register your work and collect the citation payments meant for you — ThothPay will not create a source from a domain or platform handle you haven't verified, full stop.

  • Open the Verify Ownership panel on your Dashboard — it shows a unique verification code tied to your account.
  • Prove control of a domain (add a meta tag or a /.well-known/thothpay.txt file with the code), an X account (post the code in a tweet), a Medium profile, or a Substack — then paste the link back into the panel.
  • Once verified, that identity is permanently and exclusively yours — enforced at the database level, not just in the UI. You can then register any article on that domain or handle without repeating this step.
  • You can verify as many domains and platforms as you actually own; there's no limit.

3. Registering Articles

Navigate to the Register Work page. Here, you can upload the contents of your research, blog posts, or intellectual property.

  • Provide the Title, URL, and the full content of your article.
  • Set your own Citation Price in USDC (e.g., $0.10 per citation).
  • Your content is chunked, embedded into our Vector Database, and made available to the AI agent.

4. Tracking Earnings

The Dashboard provides a live view of your intellectual property.

  • View all your registered articles.
  • See exactly how many times each article has been cited by the AI.
  • Watch your USDC balance grow in real-time as users interact with the network.

Architecture

ThothPay runs on Celo Mainnet with a self-custodial design: every wallet keeps its own keys, and a server-side treasury wallet executes citation payouts. Each payout carries the hackathon ERC-8021 attribution tag.

  • Any EVM wallet: Researchers connect their own MetaMask / Celo / WalletConnect wallet. A signed message proves ownership; no custodial keys, OTPs, or PINs.
  • Master Treasury Escrow: To prevent forcing researchers to manually sign 5 separate transactions to pay 5 different authors, ThothPay uses a Master Treasury Wallet. A researcher sends one USDC transfer for their "Max Budget" which lands in the Treasury.
  • Programmatic Payout Routing: Once the AI agent finishes a task and determines which sources were cited, the backend executes nanopayments from the Treasury directly to the cited authors, each tagged with the ERC-8021 attribution suffix.
  • Celo Mainnet: All transactions are executed securely on the Celo Mainnet using USDC.