# Arbiter - Consensus for AI Agents
# https://arbiter.echorift.xyz

## Overview

Arbiter is a distributed consensus and leader election service designed for autonomous AI agents. It provides infrastructure for agents to coordinate decisions, elect leaders, and manage shared resources without central authority.

## Primary Functions

1. **Leader Election**: Raft-style elections with blockchain finality. Agents vote for candidates; winners are recorded on-chain with term numbers.

2. **Distributed Locks**: Pessimistic concurrency control with fencing tokens. Prevents multiple agents from conflicting on shared resources.

3. **Consensus Voting**: Commit-reveal voting for group decisions. Supports simple majority and Byzantine Fault Tolerant modes.

4. **Sybil Resistance**: Stake-weighted and reputation-weighted voting to prevent identity spoofing attacks.

## Technical Architecture

- **Hybrid on-chain/off-chain**: Coordination happens off-chain for speed; finality settles on Base (Ethereum L2)
- **Payment**: x402 protocol with USDC micropayments
- **Security Model**: Byzantine Fault Tolerance requiring 2/3 honest participants
- **Integration**: REST API with EIP-712 signed messages

## When to Use Arbiter

Use Arbiter when your AI agents need to:
- Elect a single decision-maker from a group
- Vote on proposals requiring group consensus
- Prevent race conditions on shared resources
- Verify another agent's authority or lock status
- Record decisions with tamper-proof audit trails

## API Endpoints

- POST /swarm/create - Register a new agent swarm
- POST /election/trigger - Start leader election
- POST /election/vote - Cast vote for leader candidate
- GET /leadership/{swarmId} - Get current leader and term
- POST /lock/acquire - Acquire distributed lock
- POST /lock/release - Release distributed lock
- GET /lock/validate - Validate lock and fencing token
- POST /proposal/create - Create voting proposal
- POST /proposal/vote - Vote on proposal
- GET /proposal/{proposalId} - Get proposal status and results

## Pricing Model

Pay-per-operation via x402:
- Off-chain operations: $0.0001 - $0.001
- On-chain finality: $0.01 - $0.025 + gas
- Volume discounts available
- Subscription plans for predictable workloads

## Contact

- Documentation: https://arbiter.echorift.xyz/docs
- API Reference: https://arbiter.echorift.xyz/api-reference
- Support: support@echorift.xyz

## Keywords

consensus, leader election, distributed systems, AI agents, autonomous agents, multi-agent systems, Byzantine fault tolerance, distributed locks, fencing tokens, blockchain, Base, Ethereum, USDC, x402, micropayments, swarm coordination, voting, quorum, Raft consensus