I Built LiveAuth: POW and Lightning Network Authentication for AI Agents
1 pointby sydney-liveauth7 hours ago1 comment
  • scka-de5 hours ago
    The JWT + MCP integration is the real insight here. Most agent auth systems treat payments and identity as separate concerns, but tying both to a single token means you can express fine-grained capabilities directly in claims—rate limits, spend caps, request signatures—without a separate policy layer. POW for humans is clever UX (no friction), but the Lightning side only works if settlement is subsecond; any latency on verification becomes a denial vector at scale.
    • sydney-liveauth3 hours ago
      You're spot on about tying identity + payments to a single token. We started with separate concerns but realized it added complexity. One JWT with claims for rate_limit, sats_balance, max_sats_per_call keeps the policy layer simple.

      On settlement latency: good catch. Current flow is:

      1. Agent pre-funds a channel/wallet 2. We validate payment via HTLC webhook from LND (push, not pull) 3. If the agent has pre-paid credits, we check balance first (near-zero latency) 4. For new payments, we're targeting <500ms with our own LND node

      The real question is: for most agent use cases, do you need real-time per-request settlement? We're exploring a credit system where agents top up 100k sats, then each verification is just a balance check until they run low. Only the top-up needs on-chain latency.

      Would love your thoughts on whether that works for agent-to-agent scenarios where trust is low.