Build x402 Enabled OpenClaw Agents with ampersend on Pinata

AI agents are only as powerful as the infrastructure beneath them and now, that infrastructure can pay its own way.

Using OpenClaw and the ampersend-sdk (developed by Edge & Node) which provides tooling for x402 payment capabilities, your AI agent now can become an actor in the agentic economy.

That’s why Edge & Node partnered with Pinata to launch a special template that will get you up and running in minutes.

What is ampersend?

ampersend is a toolkit and platform built by Edge & Node that wires x402 payment capabilities into AI agents and LLM applications, enabling agents to autonomously pay for, and charge for, data, compute and other resources on a per-request basis.

The ampersend SDK supports both buyer and seller roles out of the box, across two transport layers:

• MCP (Model Context Protocol) — per-request payment gating for LLM tool integrations
• A2A (Agent-to-Agent) — payment-enabled communication between autonomous agents

ampersend also serves as a control and visibility layer for agent spending. Every transaction flows through the Treasurer, giving operators a single place to set spending limits, enforce approval thresholds, and audit what each agent paid for, making autonomous agent behavior governable and observable by default

What is an Agent Template?

Agent Templates are pre-built, ready-to-deploy agents that come with tools, workflows, and context already configured on Pinata.

You can launch an agent in minutes and immediately start customizing it.

x402 Enabled OpenClaw Agents

OpenClaw agents can now act as autonomous economic participants using the ampersend SDK. Rather than relying on pre-funded API keys or manual billing cycles, an OpenClaw agent can connect to ampersend.ai to both spend and earn over x402, directly, per-request, onchain.

On the spending side, an agent can pay for premium data, compute, or third-party agent services at the moment it needs them, no human in the loop, no upfront allocation. On the earning side, the same agent can expose its own capabilities (specialized analysis, curated data access, workflow execution) and gate them behind x402 payment flows, collecting micropayments from other agents or end users autonomously.

This transforms OpenClaw agents from tools that consume APIs into first-class actors in the agentic economy, able to negotiate access to resources, recover costs from the value they produce, and operate financially self-sufficient across agent networks.

Query Subgraph Data Served The Graph’s Decentralized Network

The Graph's decentralized network gives agents access to rich, structured blockchain data through subgraphs, but traditionally this requires API keys, centralized billing, and trust assumptions that break down in autonomous, multi-agent systems.

The solution is an x402-enabled proxy layered in front of a self-hosted Subgraph MCP server. When an agent queries a subgraph through this proxy, the proxy intercepts the request and initiates an x402 payment handshake using the ampersend SDK,  the requesting agent pays per query, on-chain, without any API key exchange. The Subgraph MCP server handles the actual data retrieval from The Graph's decentralized network, while ampersend manages the payment lifecycle and revenue attribution.

This architecture lets OpenClaw agents running the subgraph MCP server earn x402 revenue directly from agent-to-agent interactions. Any OpenClaw agent  or any A2A-compatible agent can query your subgraph by paying the declared price, with no manual provisioning required. It replaces the API key model entirely, making subgraph data natively composable into autonomous agent workflows at the economic layer as well as the data layer.

How it works

The ampersend Agent Templates includes:

• The skill to setup and install the ampersend-sdk
• Pre-configured access to subgraphs via a self hosted Subgraph MCP server
• An example implementation of an x402 enabled payment layer (Express server)
• Enable Agent to Agent payments for data served from The Graph’s decentralized network, replacing the need for API keys.

You can fork the template, run it immediately, and adapt it to your own application. 

Want an overview of the platform and how to set up the ampersend templates? Watch the following workshop, titled Build x402 Enabled OpenClaw Agents with ampersend and Pinata Agent Templates on the Edge & Node YouTube channel. 

From APIs to agents

The way we interact with data infrastructure and endpoints is changing. Rather than manually querying APIs, developers can now build autonomous agents that both consume and monetize resources using x402. The agentic economy has arrived!

Get started

Try the Edge & Node Agent Templates today:

👉 ampersend Template 

👉 ampersend with Subgraph MCP Template 

Learn more about Agent Templates from Pinata:

👉 Pinata blog