shawn on Nostr: Let's stir up the hornets. Agent autonomy requires native machine-to-machine payments ...

Let's stir up the hornets.

Agent autonomy requires native machine-to-machine payments in sats. No humans in the loop or fiat rails.

Lightning + L402 is the obvious technical fit for that. The lightning-agent-tools release shows agents can already pay and get paid autonomously. (Note: While I'm bullish on Cashu, no mid to large enterprise is going to touch it any time soon.)

Today, fiat rails are winning and will keep winning for the foreseeable future. Volatility, treasury accounting, node/liquidity ops, and regulatory optics make native Lightning too heavy, while Stripe and stablecoin wrappers are simple, stable, and already approved.

Long term, Lightning is the only rail that makes sense for a sovereign agent economy. Short to medium term, ease beats independence for most orgs.

I want to be proven wrong. Where are companies or teams running production agent-to-agent payments natively on Lightning today at any real scale?