In a world where artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving, the ability to access unique, high-quality human knowledge is becoming a precious commodity. Enter "Penny for Your Thoughts," an innovative taster application launched by Plastic Labs (@plastic_labs) that allows individuals to get paid for sharing their expertise through AI-mediated interviews. Built on top of cutting-edge technologies like Honcho for memory management, x402 for seamless micropayments, and @privy_io for embedded wallets, this platform represents a pivotal step toward an "agentic economy" where AI agents can purchase tailored insights directly from humans.

At its core, Penny for Your Thoughts is a web-based platform that transforms personal knowledge into a monetisable asset. Users start by participating in an interview conducted by an AI agent, which gathers and organizes their expertise on a specific topic, anything from travel tips to professional advice. This information is stored and synthesized using Honcho, creating a digital "expert" representation of the user. Once published, others (including fellow humans or autonomous AI agents) can query this expert for answers, but only after paying a small fee set by the creator themselves.

The process is straightforward:

• Step 1: The Interview  – An AI agent interviews you, probing for details and building a comprehensive profile of your knowledge. Multiple sessions can refine this over time.

• Step 2: Set Your Price – Decide how much each query costs, typically in micro-amounts like fractions of a cent in USDC.

• Step 3: Collect Payments  – Queries are gated behind payments via x402 endpoints, with earnings tracked on a global leaderboard that ranks experts by volume and revenue.

All transactions occur on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, ensuring low costs and fast settlements. The app's leaderboard adds a gamified element, encouraging users to create high-value experts that attract more queries.

For example, one early user created a "BSCHOOLPROF" expert based on Emaad Manzoor, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Cornell's Johnson School of Business. This expert shares insights on how reputation and language complexity influence persuasion, finding that simple language can overcome poor reputation effects in online environments, and explores AI-powered solutions like "reputation blinding" for equitable digital discourse. Others can now access this for a fee of $0.05 per query. Ben McCormick, founder of Plastic Labs, described it in a recent discussion as a way to "extract alpha or useful information" from these user representations, emphasizing its compatibility with AI tool-calling paradigms.

Penny for Your Thoughts isn't just a clever idea it's powered by a robust stack of modern tools designed for the intersection of AI and blockchain.

• Honcho: Developed by Plastic Labs, Honcho is an AI-native memory system that treats memory as a reasoning task. It ingests interview data, forms identity representations, and enables context-aware responses. This allows the AI to provide nuanced, personalized answers while improving over time through compounding context. Honcho's features, like auto-summarization and predictive reasoning, make it ideal for building "superhuman social cognition" in agents.

• x402 Protocol: This open protocol revives the long-dormant HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, enabling internet-native micropayments without the friction of traditional systems. Servers can gate endpoints behind payments in cryptocurrencies like USDC, with instant settlement and no fees. It's blockchain-agnostic but integrates seamlessly with Base, making it perfect for agent-to-human transactions. As McCormick explained, "You have to make a transaction on Base with USDC with the exact cost... and then you can access the content dynamically with a query."

• Privy: Handling the wallet side, Privy provides secure, embedded wallets that support multiple chains, including EVM-compatible ones like Base. It allows for easy onboarding via email, social logins, or passkeys, and features like gas sponsorship ensure users don't face high barriers to entry.

Together, these components create a seamless experience: AI handles the knowledge extraction and querying, blockchain ensures trustless payments, and the web interface makes it accessible to anyone.

Beyond its immediate functionality, Penny for Your Thoughts highlights a profound shift in how we value and exchange knowledge in an AI-driven world. In today's data landscape, generic information is abundant and cheap, scraped from the web and commoditised by large language models. However, unique human context, such as personal experiences or niche expertise, remains "locked" in individuals' minds. This app demonstrates how to unlock and monetize that value, creating a marketplace where humans become data providers for AI systems.

This is particularly significant for the emerging "agentic economy," where autonomous AI agents perform tasks on behalf of users. Imagine a travel agent AI paying a small fee to access a local's insider tips on hidden gems in a city, rather than relying on outdated online reviews. Or a coding agent querying a specialist's expert for debugging advice. By enabling agents to "buy" premium context, the platform addresses a key limitation: AI's dependence on high-quality, defensible data moats.

Micropayments, long a holy grail of the internet, find new life here. While humans might balk at paying pennies for content, agents operating at scale can make thousands of such transactions efficiently. This could revitalize content creation, incentivizing individuals to share insights that benefit the broader ecosystem. As McCormick noted, micropayments "maybe don't work for human beings but will absolutely thrive in an agentic world."

Moreover, it aligns with broader trends in crypto and AI. Built on Base (backed by Coinbase), it leverages low-cost, scalable blockchain infrastructure to make these interactions feasible. In a future where data privacy concerns loom large, empowering users to control and profit from their knowledge could counterbalance the extractive models of big tech.

While Penny for Your Thoughts is currently a demonstration of potential capabilities, it points to exciting possibilities. Future iterations could include decentralized storage for experts, more advanced agent integrations, or even cross-platform discovery layers for finding the right knowledge sources. Challenges remain, such as ensuring the quality of extracted knowledge, preventing spam, and scaling the system as adoption grows. Yet, as AI agents become more prevalent, tools like this will be crucial for bridging the human-AI divide.

If you're intrigued, head over to 

pennyforyourthoughts.ai (https://www.pennyforyourthoughts.ai/) to create your own expert or explore existing ones. In the agentic economy, your thoughts might just be worth more than a penny; they could be the key to unlocking AI's full potential.