PunditPay · Tether Developers Cup 2026 · QVAC × WDK Track

The agent that
tips with its own keys.

An on-device AI that reasons about the match, and pays a commentator in USD₮ over plain HTTP — bounded by a spend cap it can never override.

QVAC · on-device brain x402 · USD₮ over HTTP WDK · self-custody + policy cap 268 tests · Apache-2.0

Watch the demo Source on GitHub ↗ Tether Dev Cup ↗

The problem

The tip that never happened.

01The moment is instant.A stoppage-time comeback, a called shot — the gratitude peaks for a few seconds, then it's gone.
02Every path kills it.An account, a card, a checkout, your data handed to a payment processor — by the time it's done, the moment already passed.

"I wanted to tip the streamer who called the comeback in stoppage time — but it meant an account, a card, a checkout, and handing my data to a payment processor. The moment passed. I never tipped."

→ so we gave the agent its own wallet.

The solution

An agent with its own wallet, and a rule it can't break.

◆Reasons on-device.QVAC runs a local GGUF model with tool-calling. No cloud, no API key — judgment never leaves the machine.
◆Pays over plain HTTP.When confidence clears your rule, the model calls pay_tip and an x402 round-trip (402 → sign → receipt) settles a USD₮ tip — no account on either side.
◆Bounded by its own wallet.A WDK Transaction Policy — default-deny — checks every payment before signing. Over the cap, the wallet refuses itself.

The magic moment

Watch the agent's own wallet say no.

90+2'
conf 96%

ALLOW · confidence 96% vs rule >70% — tipped 0.25 USD₮ to @vantage for the exact stoppage-time counter The model's own judgment clears the bar it was given. It signs, and the tip settles.

FT
1.00 / 1.00

BLOCKED · PolicyViolationError: would exceed session cap Same agent, one moment later — its own wallet refuses the signature. Zero money moves. Logged in plain language, live.

The model proposes; the policy disposes. A jailbroken brain still can't outspend the cap — the check happens in the wallet, not in a prompt.

The stack · all real, all load-bearing

One agent. Three integrated pieces.

QVAC	The brain, on-device. `loadModel()` → `completion({tools})` tool-calling over a local GGUF model (Qwen3 1.7B default) — the model itself decides to call `pay_tip`, streamed reasoning, zero cloud calls.
WDK	Self-custody & the guardrail. `@tetherto/wdk` BIP-39 keys on-device; `registerPolicy()`'s default-deny Transaction Policy engine — `PolicyViolationError` is a real thrown error, not a UI message.
x402	The handshake. HTTP 402 → signed payment → resource, one paid round-trip; `@tetherto/wdk-wallet-spark` settles zero-fee on Spark testnet.
Core	The discipline. A framing guard fails the build on betting vocabulary anywhere in the app; a zero-cloud guard fails it on any cloud-AI host reference — enforced in CI, not just promised in docs.

Proof, not promises

It's real, and it's green.

268

tests passing · 62 suites, 0 failing, under 1 second

0

high/critical vulnerabilities · npm audit --audit-level=high

100%

src line / function / branch coverage · CI-gated

<25ms

performance budget · x402 p95, enforced in CI

punditpay — claims you can re-run

$ npm test
# pass 268  # fail 0  # suites 62

$ npm run verify:offline
phase 1 — reasoning: 0 network attempts across the full match
phase 2 — settlement blocked cleanly, no spend recorded

$ npm audit --audit-level=high
found 0 vulnerabilities

A 6-stage CI pipeline (quality → secret scan + dependency audit → build → E2E → performance → submission gate) plus a separate CodeQL scan and a TruffleHog secret sweep run on every push.

PunditPay

Rewarding a great call
should be as fast as the call itself.

Self-custodial. On-device. Bounded by its own wallet — and it just refused a payment on stage to prove it.

Apache-2.0 v1.0.0 npm run demo Tether Developers Cup 2026