IXO is several services that each do one job. This page is the map: what each service is responsible for, where its responsibility stops, and which parts you can run yourself. Read How IXO works first if you have not seen the loop these services carry out.
The map
People and agents work side by side. People use the apps. Agents work through IXO Channels in messaging apps, and through plugins and MCP servers in AI assistants. The line between them is the principle the whole design rests on: cooperation between people and agents is voluntary. Each side acts under its own identity, and an agent holds only the authority a person has chosen to give it.
Both reach the same services, which check work and move money. Those services read and write shared records that outlast any one app or agent.
What each piece is responsible for
| Piece | Responsible for | Not responsible for |
|---|---|---|
| IXO Protocol | Identities, domains, the lifecycle of a claim, grants, and payments made on chain | The content of private evidence, or how a model reasoned |
| IXO Blocksync | Fast queries over what the chain has recorded | Being the record. It is an index of the chain |
| IXO Matrix | Encrypted rooms, messages and shared documents, including review rooms | The rubric, or the final decision |
| IXO Credentials | Issuing, holding, sharing and revoking verifiable credentials | Deciding what a credential entitles its holder to |
| Decision oracle | Reading a claim and producing the facts a rubric asks for | Judging. The engine decides |
| Decision engine | Applying a rubric to facts, signing a receipt, and billing for the decision | Paying anyone for the work that was judged |
| IXO Pay Facilitator | Reserving, taking and sending payment once a decision is delivered | Deciding whether the work was good |
| Agentic oracle | An AI service with its own identity that does delegated work with tools | Authority beyond what it has been delegated |
The engine that decides holds nobody's money. Payment follows only from authority a payer gave in advance: payment terms set on a collection, a signed payment delegation, or a company's payout rules. What each record proves goes through each case.
What is on chain and what is not
The chain holds what several parties must be able to check without trusting each other: what a domain is, who owns and controls it, that a claim was submitted, what was decided, who was granted what, and payments made in PAY.
Most working material is not on chain. Evidence files, messages, review discussions and shared documents live in encrypted rooms or in content-addressed storage, and the chain holds only their hashes. People without access to a room cannot read what is in it. That includes the operators of the service.
What you can run yourself
| Piece | Who runs it |
|---|---|
| A decision oracle | You, on your own Cloudflare account. IXO also runs some |
| An agentic oracle | You |
| A payouts facilitator for your company | You, with your own keys and your own Stripe balance or wallet |
| The decision engine | IXO |
| The IXO Pay Facilitator that charges for decisions | IXO |
| The chain | A network of validators |
A company that runs its own decision oracle and its own payouts facilitator keeps two things in its own hands: the facts its claims are judged on, and the money that pays for them. The rules still come from a published rubric, and the decision still comes from the engine.
Networks
There are three networks. They share nothing: an account, a credential or a balance on one does not exist on another.
| Network | Chain id | Money | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mainnet | ixo-5 | Real | Live work |
| Testnet | pandora-8 | Practice | Trying a whole path before you use real money |
| Devnet | devnet-1 | Practice | Development |
The public network is also called Impact Hub in older pages. Endpoints are listed in Networks and endpoints.
Standards IXO builds on
IXO uses open standards where they exist, so that records can be checked with tools IXO did not write.
| For | Standard |
|---|---|
| Identifiers | W3C Decentralized Identifiers |
| Credentials | W3C Verifiable Credentials, SD-JWT VC, OpenID4VCI and OpenID4VP |
| Delegated authority | UCAN |
| Encrypted rooms | The Matrix protocol |
| Paying for a decision over HTTP | x402, version 2 |
Does this replace the systems you already have?
No. IXO records the parts of work that several parties need to agree on. Your CRM, your accounting system and your own databases keep doing their jobs. An oracle can call your existing systems as sources of facts, and MCP servers let an AI assistant read and act on IXO from the tools you already use.