AURA — Autonomous Utility Revenue Agent

ETHDenver 2026 BUIDLathon | Built on Base | Powered by Claude AI

AURA is a self-sustaining autonomous AI agent that earns more than it spends on compute — achieving true economic autonomy on Base mainnet.

Live Demo

Resource	Link
📊 Dashboard	aura-two-gules.vercel.app
🔗 Agent Wallet	basescan.org/address/0x0968452513515636e0BE413d93Af64e101b299B0
🎥 Demo Video	https://youtu.be/jOxbctilDwA)
📁 GitHub	github.com/XanDev3/aura

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What Is AURA?

AURA is an AI agent (Claude via Vercel AI SDK) running autonomously on Base mainnet. Every 5 minutes it:

1. Reads its on-chain state — wallet balance, Aave position, compute costs, revenue
2. Reasons — Claude evaluates whether to deposit more USDC, withdraw, or hold
3. Acts — executes the decision on-chain (every tx tagged with ERC-8021 builder code)
4. Logs — uploads its reasoning to 0G Storage for a tamper-proof audit trail
5. Reports — dashboard updates so humans can observe without intervening

Revenue Sources

Source	Mechanism	Est. Return
Aave V3 Yield	USDC deposited to Aave lending pool	3-5% APY ($0.016/day on $150)
x402 Analysis Service	Clients pay per query — price scales with query complexity	$0.01–$0.10/query

Cost

• Claude Haiku for routine ticks: ~$0.002 per tick, ~$0.50/day
• Claude Sonnet for paid x402 analysis: ~$0.010–$0.015 per request for typical queries (including tool overhead)
• x402 pricing uses 3x margin on estimated Sonnet cost → every request profitable
• Queries capped at 2000 chars — prevents adversarial token-drain
• Covered by Aave yield + x402 revenue

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Architecture

[Railway: Agent Daemon]  ←→  [Vercel KV]  ←→  [Vercel: Dashboard]
        ↓                                              ↑
   [Base Mainnet]                             [0G Storage (logs)]
   Aave V3 / x402

Stack:

• Agent: Node.js + Vercel AI SDK + Claude (Haiku for ticks, Sonnet for analysis)
• Wallet: viem + ERC-8021 builder codes (every transaction)
• DeFi: Aave V3 on Base (USDC supply/withdraw)
• Payments: x402 protocol (sell DeFi analysis)
• Storage: 0G Storage for decentralized decision logs
• State: Vercel KV (Redis)
• Dashboard: Next.js 16 + Tailwind on Vercel

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Setup (Local Development)

# 1. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/XanDev3/aura
cd aura-agent
npm install

# 2. Configure environment
cp .env.example .env.local
# Fill in all values — see .env.example for instructions

# 3. Start dashboard
npm run dev

# 4. Start agent (separate terminal)
npm run agent:dev

# 5. (Optional) Test x402 payment flow
npm run test:x402          # runs 1 query (default — cheapest)
npm run test:x402 -- 2    # runs 2 queries
npm run test:x402 -- 3    # runs all 3 queries

npm arg quirk: flags like --count are consumed by npm before reaching the script. Always use the bare -- N form (with the -- separator) when running via npm run. For direct invocation: tsx scripts/test-x402-client.ts --count 3

Required Credentials

Credential	Where to Get
AGENT_PRIVATE_KEY	Create fresh wallet (MetaMask, cast)
AGENT_WALLET_ADDRESS	Derived from private key
ERC8021_BUILDER_CODE	base.dev → Settings → Builder Codes
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	platform.anthropic.com
KV_*	Vercel Dashboard → Storage → KV
ZG_*	build.0g.ai + faucet.0g.ai

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Verify Self-Sustainability

1. Open the dashboard at the live URL (no login required)
2. Look at the StatusBadge — shows SELF-SUSTAINING ✓ or DEFICIT ✗
3. Check PLChart — yield earned line should be above compute cost line
4. Check Runway Meter — shows hours of compute the agent can fund itself
5. Click any transaction in DecisionLog to verify ERC-8021 code on Basescan

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Safety Design

AURA is designed to be safe by construction:

• Only USDC — principal never in volatile assets
• Hard floor — never lets total USDC drop below $25
• No leverage — only simple lending, no borrowing
• Abuse-resistant — x402 queries capped at 2000 chars; dynamic pricing ensures margin on every request
• Transparent — all decisions logged to 0G Storage
• Observable — public dashboard, no passwords
• Pausable — manual kill-switch via Vercel KV, no Railway restart needed

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Pausing the Agent

The agent can be paused without touching Railway. It will keep running but skip every tick until unpaused.

To pause:

1. Go to vercel.com → your project → Storage → select your KV store
2. Click Open in Upstash — this opens the Upstash console for your KV store
3. In the Upstash console, click the CLI tab
4. Run: SET aura:paused true
5. Within 5 minutes the Railway logs will show: Agent is paused — skipping tick

To resume:

1. Return to the same Upstash CLI tab
2. Run: DEL aura:paused
3. The next interval the agent ticks normally

Cost saved while paused: ~$0.86/day (288 Haiku ticks). Aave yield continues accruing onchain regardless.

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Built at ETHDenver 2026 · Solo · ~45 hours