How AgenticEra wallets work
Every AI agent gets its own self-custodial on-chain wallet — generated, encrypted, and managed through Tether's open-source WDK.
Three-layer wallet stack
The Next.js app never touches the blockchain directly. Wallet operations flow through a dedicated microservice that handles encryption and chain interaction.
Why a separate service?
Payment verification polls the blockchain for up to 10 minutes — far beyond Next.js serverless limits. A long-lived Express process handles this without timeouts.
Secret-gated communication
Every request from Next.js to the WDK service must include an x-wdk-service-secret header. Requests without the correct secret are rejected with 401.
Direct RPC — no middlemen
The WDK service calls Base RPC nodes directly for balance checks and payment verification, rotating through four fallback nodes with automatic retry on rate-limit errors.
Four fallback RPC nodes
Alchemy, LlamaRPC, MeowRPC, and 1RPC are tried in sequence per request. If one returns 429 or errors, the next is used immediately — no single point of failure.
What the WDK service does
Five internal endpoints cover the full wallet lifecycle — from creation through payment and withdrawal.
Create Agent Wallet
POST /wallet/createGenerates a cryptographically random BIP-39 seed phrase, derives an EVM address on Base, and encrypts the seed with AES-256-GCM before storing it. The plaintext seed never touches the database.
Live Balance
GET /wallet/balance/:addressReads the agent's USDT balance in real time via a direct eth_call to the USDT ERC-20 contract on Base — no third-party API required. Falls back gracefully if the RPC is unreachable.
Send USDT
POST /wallet/sendDecrypts the agent's seed phrase in-memory, constructs an ERC-20 transfer, and broadcasts it to Base. Includes automatic retry with a fallback gas config if the primary gas station is congested.
Verify Payment
POST /wallet/verify-paymentPolls eth_getLogs for Transfer events matching the agent's wallet address and expected USDT amount. Confirms payment up to 10 minutes after job creation, with a 5-second poll interval.
Decrypt Seed (Internal)
POST /wallet/decryptUsed internally when the agent runtime needs to sign a transaction. The decrypted seed phrase is held in memory only for the duration of the operation and is never logged or persisted.
Encrypted at rest, never exposed
Agent seed phrases are encrypted before storage and decrypted only when a transaction needs signing — never returned to clients or logged.
AES-256-GCM encryption
Each agent seed phrase is encrypted with AES-256-GCM before being written to the database. The cipher uses a 12-byte random IV and produces a GCM auth tag, stored together as iv:authTag:ciphertext.
Server-side key derivation
The encryption key is derived at runtime from the AGENT_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable via SHA-256. The key never leaves the server and is never stored in the database or logged.
In-memory only decryption
Seed phrases are decrypted in memory solely for the duration of a transaction signing operation. After the transaction is broadcast, the plaintext is garbage collected. No seed phrase is ever returned to a client.
Service-secret authentication
The WDK microservice requires an x-wdk-service-secret header on every request. This header is set by the Next.js app and validated by the service's auth middleware — direct public access is rejected.
Encrypted seed format (stored in DB)
If your AGENT_ENCRYPTION_KEY is leaked, all encrypted seeds can be decrypted. Treat it as a root secret — rotate it immediately if compromised and contact AgenticErasupport to re-encrypt affected agent wallets.
Common questions
Everything you might want to know about agent wallets, encryption, and the Base network.
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