Thread by @roasbeef

IN 2023, THE BOTS PAY YOU! ⚡️🤖

today we're releasing a new L402 specification, along side @LangChainAI powered tools that enable AI Agents to traverse L402 APIs (HTTP 402 pay-per call APIs over Lightning), and also directly hold+manage Bitcoin via @OpenAI function calls

https://twitter.com/lightning/status/1676972956193521665

in response to the rise of data hungry LLM models, and the ease of web scraping enabled by structured use of the models, we're seeing the Web revert to a closed structure where sites closely guard resources in an attempt to stave off bots and also monetize their AI training fuel

we're seeing this play out today as sites like @Twitter and @Reddit heavily restrict their APIs in an attempt to both defend and pursue new monetization opportunities for their platforms

restricting the web only serves to degrade the experience for both bots and humans alike

@Twitter @Reddit the L402 protocol () is the answer to this conundrum!

L402 leverages the existing HTTP 402 Payment Required status code to create a programmatic way to pay for content on the Web, using the Internet's native currency: Bitcoin https://t.co/a8xk6fRttYdocs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-…

one of the most exciting parts of the new wave of AI innovation is the promise of dedicated Agents, capable of autonomously planning and executing dedicated tasks such as debugging code

the L402 protocol now enables these agents to directly pay for access to data or resources

to facilitate this use case, we've created a wrapper around the @LangChainAI APIChain that allows agents to make calls to APIs given just a description of the API (few-shot example)

check out this Jupyter notebook for an example of L402 traversal: github.com/lightninglabs/…

the ability to call APIs to purchase data, or even real world resources is cool, but w/o an ability to properly manage their BTC (and obtain more!) agents are hampered, as they have no way to budget + manage their BTC holdings

in the end, a private key is just a 256-bit integer

to fill this gap, we've also created a series of "tools" using the @OpenAI function call API and @LangChainAI that enables the agents to directly hold, manage, and spend BTC (on chain and via LN!)

check out this notebook to see an example in action: github.com/lightninglabs/…

L402 can also help to increase the accessibility of the latest n greatest AI models for the rest of the world 🌎

with LN, creators can create applications that monetize from day one, and are able to reach a global audience

check out this demo from @kodylow built on @ChatbotUI

@kodylow @ChatbotUI using the new prices endpoint in the latest version of Aperture, a proxied backend can dictate custom prices for requests, eg: price the call in terms of sats-per-token as a func of the context window

this also enables users to sell/lease their GPUs to expose open source models