Research noteXP-2026-0081
Pricing a call is harder than charging for it
The mechanism works. Deciding what a request is worth remains unsolved.
SpansAISECFIN
6 minMachine Micro-Payments
Static per-call prices misprice badly: some requests are trivial and some are expensive, and the provider cannot tell which until the work is done.
Quote-then-execute solves it and adds a round trip, which for small amounts can cost more than the difference it recovers.