Kite Mainnet Officially Launched, Introducing Payments Layer for Agent Economy

On April 30, Kite, a payment infrastructure aimed at the AI Agent economy, announced the official launch of its mainnet. During the initial phase, Kite Treasury will cover network fees, so users will not need to be aware of gas costs. Alongside the mainnet, the Kite Agent Passport is now publicly available, serving as the authorization and payment control layer for Agents. Users can sign a session with controlled boundaries using a passkey, which includes limits on individual transactions, total budgets, validity periods, and allowed assets and payment methods. Agents can autonomously execute tasks within these constraints without needing to share bank accounts, credit cards, or private keys. All actions are logged in a unified activity log, which can be audited at any time. Kite employs a ‘three-layer integration’ architecture: the underlying settlement layer is an EVM-compatible L1 that natively supports stablecoin settlements, targeting high-frequency, low-value, Agent-driven payment scenarios; the middle layer consists of core Agent services supported by the Passport for identity, delegation, and risk control; the upper layer allows mainstream Agent runtimes to connect directly. In terms of applications, online shopping use cases are now live, with payment API calls settled through the x402 protocol. The Kite team has made it clear that they are not pursuing Total Value Locked (TVL) but will publicly measure progress based on total transaction numbers, monthly active Passport users, and total settlement amounts. Users can currently register an account at agentpassport.ai to register Agents and initiate boundary-limited delegation authorizations. The first batch has already enabled Agents to automatically complete online shopping, payment API calls, and multi-step tasks across services.