Two preview services: Data Streams (REST, single report per call) and CRE-powered transaction relay with covered gas. For oracle-heavy infra, this is the first time the Chainlink price path gets a machine-native payment rail stapled to it.
The data path: REST-only, one call, one verified price
Data Streams access arrives as a REST endpoint returning a single report per HTTP request. No batching. No streaming. x402-gated per call. Chainlink notes WebSocket may come later.
For data engineers sizing latency budgets — arb loops, perp delta checks, prediction-market fills — each roundtrip is one verified price plus settlement overhead. Benchmark against your current DON push interval. REST overhead is the new floor. Until WebSocket lands, don't architect for sub-second streaming here.
Wallet mode is the real security boundary
Agents register a Signature Verifying Account (SVA) running restricted mode by default. Restricted mode: calldata is deterministically generated by the gateway. The agent doesn't construct calls. Chainlink covers gas on the destination chain. The agent cannot bypass to arbitrary transactions from the provisioned wallet.
Unrestricted mode unlocks /direct — agent-built calldata, signed and relayed. More flexibility. The docs are explicit: unrestricted mode does NOT guarantee correct transaction construction or address integrity. Restricted does.
Track this. Most agent incidents will trace back to unrestricted mode misconfiguration, not feed deviations.
Cost shape: per-call USDC, Base settlement
x402 protocol. USDC. Base. Pay-per-request. No subscription ladder, no API tier negotiation. For low-frequency agents, sub-cent per call. For high-frequency strategies, model linearly — each call stacks.
Gas on catalog workflows is covered by Chainlink during preview. Don't bake that subsidy into long-term unit economics. When preview ends, gas overhead reappears.
What node operators should watch
- x402 settlement volume on Base — cleanest adoption signal
- REST latency benchmarks against existing DON push feeds
- WebSocket rollout timing — materially shifts the cost curve
- Unrestricted mode tx failure rate — surfaces fast
- Data Streams expansion into tokenized equities, where verified pricing matters at the asset level — see the buyer-side math in EV model cost breakdowns and charging economics