The MicroPay workforce, one in every of 5 finalists and a winner of the Constructed Prize on the hackathon. Picture supply: @PolkadotAPAC on X
[Zurich, Switzerland – October 6th, 2025] – The fusion of AI and blockchain reached a brand new milestone at a 36-hour hackathon on the TOKEN2049, Asia’s main crypto convention. Among the many occasion’s standout tasks, MicroPay, a system enabling cross-chain micropayments for AI brokers utilizing Hyperbridge, a Polkadot-based rollup, was named a class winner for its revolutionary use of Hyperbridge, a Polkadot-based rollup. Hyperbridge makes use of novel know-how to deal with the safety and interoperability challenges of conventional bridges, which have collectively misplaced over $2.8 billion to hacks.
This victory highlights a essential position cross-chain bridges play towards a really autonomous, agentic web the place machines can transact and collaborate with out human oversight.
The rise of agentic economies the place AI brokers autonomously pay for APIs, information, or providers is already underway, because of foundational work by protocols like Coinbase’s x402. Nonetheless, a significant hurdle has endured: cross-chain compatibility. Think about an AI agent (the shopper) with funds on Base that should pay an API supplier (the server) who solely accepts Ethereum. Present methods require a guide bridging course of which is sluggish, costly, and mirrors the friction of worldwide financial institution transfers. With no seamless answer, agentic funds stay impractical, stifling the expansion of AI-blockchain integration.
MicroPay solves this by integrating modifications of x402 with Hyperbridge, a Polkadot interoperability coprocessor. Hyperbridge allows safe, on-chain verification of cross-chain messages utilizing superior consensus proofs like BEEFY and zk-light shoppers. This distinctive structure permits builders to question and ship messages to disconnected chains as in the event that they had been native, whereas concurrently dodging the vulnerabilities of legacy bridges. By distributing validation throughout Polkadot’s core parachain safety, Hyperbridge achieves full node safety, as much as $3 billion, with out compromising on pace or price.
In a stay demonstration, the MicroPay system validated Hyperbridge’s effectivity. The MicroPay course of begins with the AI agent making an preliminary micropayment on its native chain (e.g., Base Sepolia) utilizing the X-402 normal. To offset excessive bridging charges and delays, MicroPay mechanically batches a number of micropayments into bigger volumes for settlement. Hyperbridge then converts the EVM tokens from the shopper’s chain to the server’s most well-liked chain (e.g., Ethereum Sepolia). This essential step includes safe, on-chain verification of state transitions. Funds are bridged to the server’s handle, enabling speedy, low-cost information entry for the agent.
Hyperbridge was the best selection for this know-how due to the way in which it allows the appliance to question different chains like they’re subsequent door and even so with a excessive financial safety. It at the moment assist over 12 EVM chains like Base, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon and others. Its structure allows environment friendly information sharing, asset tokenization, and cross-chain funds with out centralized intermediaries. For AI brokers, this interprets to high-speed, low-cost responses. This can be a essential issue for real-time interactions in autonomous economies.
MicroPay’s win underscores Hyperbridge’s essential position in enabling a verifiable, multichain future. The protocol is the brainchild of Polytope Labs co-founders, Seun Lanlege and David Salami, former engineers from the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. They designed Hyperbridge as an interoperability coprocessor that offloads advanced computations off-chain, bringing solely cryptographically safe proofs again on-chain for verification.
This revolutionary design is powered by the Interoperable State Machine Protocol (ISMP), which acts as an HTTPS-like API for safe cross-chain requests. This permits Hyperbridge to inherit Polkadot’s pooled financial safety, offering the very best safety ensures obtainable. The platform has additionally acquired important validation, having secured $5.6 million in seed funding, led by the Polkadot Ecosystem Fund and with assist from traders like Web3 Basis and Scytale Digital.
Current milestones have quickly cemented its business place. The platform is already related to over 14 chains together with Polygon, Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Chain. Moreover, Hyperbridge, now the native bridge of Polkadot, has been taking part in a key position within the Polkadot DeFi Singularity initiative which is deepening the footprint of DOT, Polkadot’s native token.
As blockchain ecosystems mature, options like MicroPay exhibit how sturdy interoperability protocols can drive adoption. Hyperbridge’s ongoing enlargement positions it as a key infrastructure for verifiable cross-chain exercise. This know-how is poised to empower numerous functions in DeFi, gaming, and information markets, the place brokers might want to pay for APIs, compute, or oracles with out human oversight.
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About Hyperbridge
Hyperbridge is the world’s most secure bridge; it replaces multisigs and MPC options, which have been on the centre of the most important bridge hacks with safe cryptographic (consensus & storage) proofs. It is already related to over 14 chains, together with Ethereum, Base, BNB chain, and many others. It allows mission-critical cross-chain consumer experiences that shouldn’t have the luxurious of centralized safety fashions, like stablecoins and different RWA issuers, DAOs and cross-chain governance.
About Polkadot
Polkadot is the highly effective, safe core of Web3, offering a shared basis that unites a few of the world’s most transformative apps and blockchains. Polkadot presents superior modular structure that enables devs to simply design and construct their very own specialised blockchain tasks, pooled safety that ensures the identical excessive normal for safe block manufacturing throughout all related chains and apps related to it, and sturdy governance that ensures a clear system the place everybody has say in shaping the blockchain ecosystem for progress and sustainability. With Polkadot, customers will not be simply individuals, they’re co-creators with the ability to form its future.
