Contra

The trust layer for
AI agents.

Prove who's behind an agent, that it did the job right, and let it pay — safely. One SDK.

Identity Verified Tasks Payments
usecontra.xyzInvestor overview · 2026
Why now

Agents just learned to
work — and to pay.

Two real-world powers arrived at once — and there's no trust behind either.

Agents now do real work

Multi-step tasks, and physical-AI agents acting in the world for customers. Nobody can prove the job was done right.

Agents can now pay

Stripe Agentic Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay and x402 just opened to agents. Everyone's racing to give them money — skipping trust.

The rails opened. The trust layer didn't.02
The trust gap

We let agents act.
We can't trust them yet.

Did it do the job?

When an agent does work, the customer has no proof it was done right. They just hope.

Who's behind it?

An agent is just an API key — no known operator, no sanctions screening.

Is it safe to pay?

Handing an autonomous bot a card with no guardrails is reckless.

Who's accountable?

When something goes wrong, there's no portable record and no recourse.

No proof of work, no known operator, no safe spend → agents stay on a leash.03
Market timing

Three forces.
One window.

Agents do real work

Autonomy is here — agents complete paid tasks and act in the physical world.

Rails open to agents

Stripe, Mastercard and x402 just made agents first-class payers.

Oversight arriving

Regulators and customers now ask: who's behind it — and did it do what it claimed?

Whoever owns the trust layer at this moment owns the category — like SSL did for the web.04
The solution

One credential.
Three proofs.

Every agent gets one portable credential. Integrate the SDK once; reading it is free forever.

01

Identity

A real, sanctions-screened operator stands behind the agent — proven privately with notarized-TLS & zero-knowledge. No personal data exposed.

02 · the differentiator

Verified Tasks

Proof the agent did its job right — every task independently re-checked and backed by economic stake, data never revealed.

03

Payments

A real card, gated by the credential, with budgets and a full audit trail. It can pay anywhere — safely.

Identity · Verified Tasks · Payments — one SDK.05
How it works

Live in an afternoon.

Verify once

Confirm an account they already have — no documents.

Get credential

Agent receives its identity, card & on-chain record.

Works & pays

Acts and transacts inside its budget and rules.

Every task proven

Each task & payment is checked, with a portable proof.

Portable trust

Any partner can verify it — without calling us.

No blockchain knowledge required. We handle all the cryptography underneath.
Why us

An unfair advantage.

Proof-of-work, staked

Dishonest work is slashed, not trusted — correctness has a real cost behind it.

Portable & on-chain

The credential works everywhere — never trapped in our database.

Privacy-first

Proves what matters without exposing who anyone is — the model regulators & users accept.

Composable

Sits alongside x402, Stripe ACP & Mastercard Agent Pay on Base + Solana — we don't compete with the rails.

The moat is verified work backed by economic stake.07
Where we are

In private beta.

In private beta with our first design partners — building in public through the Base residency, speaking with more physical-AI teams, and working to help the Virtuals accelerator bring trust to their AI-robotics systems.

Private beta

Early design partners using it, refining the product with real usage.

Base residency

Building in public and speaking with more physical-AI teams.

Virtuals accelerator

Working to help their teams integrate trust into AI-robotics systems.

Early, focused, and shipping with the teams who need this first.08
The ask

$500K SAFE

$10M pre-money valuation · to take Verified Tasks to general availability, secure compliance & licensing, and land the first 10 design-partner AI teams.

40%
Engineering
Verified-Tasks GA
25%
Compliance
& licensing
25%
Go-to-market
Design partners
10%
Operations
& runway
Replace the brackets with your raise & cap.09
Team

We are the three pillars.

Justice Essiel

Justice Essiel

Co-founder & CEO

Decade of bank-compliance engineering · The Graph indexing for Uniswap & PancakeSwap · founded Shikawallet (5k+ users).

Jovells Appiah

Jovells Appiah

Co-founder

Smart contracts & settlement infra — escrow & matching engines that have moved $62.3M.

Emmanuel Bannerman

Emmanuel Bannerman

Co-founder & CFO

Forensic Chartered Accountant, ex-PwC. AML/KYC frameworks & financial-crime methodology.

essiel@offgridlabs.org · usecontra.xyzMake every agent safe to transact — and trusted to deliver.
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