Margin Analysis
The Settlement Cost Delta
Agent workloads generate large numbers of small transactions. The gas cost per transaction, not the notional, dominates. TrustGate routes those claims through a path where most state writes collapse.
The baseline
A direct ERC-20 transfer on Ethereum mainnet costs roughly 65,000 gas. At 30 gwei and $3,000 per ETH, that settles near $5.85 per transfer. We use a conservative $2.50 benchmark in the margin panel — typical of L1 at average gas prices.
TrustGate path
A single TrustGate claim on Arc Testnet is cheap natively (Arc is a low-cost chain) but the real win is architectural: the allowance model collapses the per-claim state surface. For HIGH tier, a claim is one SSTORE to decrement the per-agent allowance plus one ERC-20 transfer. For MEDIUM/LOW tier, the USDC does not move until release — and release can be batched per depositor.
At a reference cost of $0.0008 per claim, the cost delta vs L1 at scale is the margin the demo streams in real time:
| Volume | L1 cost | TrustGate | Saved | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 tx | $250.00 | $0.08 | $249.92 | 99.97% |
| 1,000 tx | $2,500.00 | $0.80 | $2,499.20 | 99.97% |
| 10,000 tx | $25,000.00 | $8.00 | $24,992.00 | 99.97% |
When TrustGate does not win
The comparison assumes stablecoin transfer volume, not L1 settlement guarantees. For one-off high-value transfers where L1 finality is itself the product — treasury movements, large OTC trades — the gas cost is a rounding error on the notional, and the margin collapses. TrustGate is for workloads where per-transaction cost matters more than per-transaction finality.
Live demo
The Nanopayment Stream page simulates 56 agents firing bursty claims. It tracks running session cost on both paths and exposes the delta as the primary readout. Numbers are simulated; methodology is identical to the table above.