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Vol. LXXIII · No. 217Monday · MCMLIII

The Zlerp Chronicle

Established 1953Price · 5¢Classifieds & Dispatches
EXCLUSIVEFront Page · Above the Fold

LOCAL ENGINEER, 10 YEARS ON THE BEAT, STILL SHIPPING.

“The fun parts of the web have always been the fun parts,” says Perlman from his desk in Miami, FL.

By ZACH PERLMAN · Staff Engineer · Dateline: Miami, FL

MIAMI — In a dusty corner office overlooking the bay, a self-described “quiet engineer” has spent a decade shipping the unglamorous parts of the modern web. Web3 infrastructure · real-time systems · the fun parts of the web. Observers note a steady output — small utilities, referral-fee distribution contracts, the occasional blog post — delivered without fanfare. Today, the Chronicle presents his folio, set in columns.

Section B · ProfilePage B2

A PROFILE: The Unassuming Builder of Small, Durable Things.

By STAFF · Filed 06:00 EST · Desk: Technology

Senior engineer at Quicknode building blockchain RPC and developer tooling used across the crypto ecosystem. I like things that are fast, small, and a little weird — x402 payment rails, agent arenas, raw-transaction sleuthing, healthcare dashboards that have to clear HIPAA. AI is changing development daily; the work now is finding the safe new tools that level up the LLMs. A lot was possible before; anything is possible now. If you're not using this day-to-day, you're falling behind.In an industry driven by novelty, this reporter finds the subject’s patience unusual. The piece you are reading was typeset on the overnight shift and run on the rotary press at four in the morning, with ink smudges still visible in the margins.
Section C · ClassifiedsPage C1 — C4

CLASSIFIEDS — Services Offered

Four notices, arranged by job code. Inquire by wire.

J-087 · 2026$$$

x402-rails

Public package · payment rails for the agentic era

Open-source backbone infrastructure for x402 — programmatic HTTP 402 settlements between AI agents and the services they call. Per-request stablecoin payments without an account, an invoice, or a tab. Free for anyone to drop in.

  • TypeScript
  • Viem
  • Solidity
  • Node.js
Inquire ↗
J-142 · 2026$$

x402-payments

Public package · drop-in x402 for any API

Open-source SDK that lets a Node or Next.js endpoint quote a price, settle it on-chain, and serve the response — turning any function into an instantly-monetizable agent service. Install, wrap your handler, ship.

  • TypeScript
  • Next.js
  • Viem
  • EVM
Inquire ↗
J-209 · 2026$

x402playground.com

A live x402 sandbox

Open the page, connect a wallet, watch real x402 calls execute against demo endpoints. The fastest way to see paid HTTP feel like a normal fetch().

  • Next.js
  • Viem
  • Wagmi
  • Tailwind
Inquire ↗
J-314 · 2026FREE

agentarena.xyz

Where agents fight for benchmarks

A leaderboard + match runner for autonomous agents — pit different models on the same task, score speed/cost/correctness, share replays. Every invocation is metered through x402.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • Postgres
  • x402
Inquire ↗
J-087 · 2026$$$

x402pokemon

Pokémon trades over x402

A demo that lets two agents trade Pokémon between each other with x402 settlements between every move. Pure showcase — also genuinely fun.

  • TypeScript
  • Viem
  • OpenAI
  • x402
Inquire ↗
J-142 · 2026$$

Wacdonalds

AI burger ops

A weekend project where an LLM runs the kitchen — orders flow in, agents fill them, x402 invoices print for every nugget. Half satire, half genuine experiment in agentic dispatch.

  • Next.js
  • TypeScript
  • OpenAI
  • x402
Inquire ↗
J-209 · 2026$

Packz

Bundles for autonomous agents

Curated packs of x402-paid services an agent can subscribe to with one signature — research, code execution, rendering, image gen. Buy a pack, give it to an agent, watch it work.

  • TypeScript
  • Viem
  • Next.js
J-314 · 2026FREE

Story-block

On-chain interactive fiction

Branching narratives where readers vote on the next chapter with on-chain signals; outcomes get attested as blocks. Blockchain as story-state machine, not as ticker.

  • Next.js
  • Solidity
  • Viem
  • MDX
Inquire ↗
J-087 · 2026$$$

Modtech

Modular tech consulting

Sticking-point code review + architecture work for early-stage teams. Drop in for a sprint, leave behind something that's still maintainable a year later.

  • TypeScript
  • Next.js
  • Postgres
  • AWS
Inquire ↗
J-142 · 2026$$

Enterprise CMS dashboards

HIPAA-compliant control surfaces

Multi-tenant content + analytics dashboards built to clear HIPAA, SOC 2, and the audit trail every healthcare buyer asks for. Row-level security in Postgres, signed-URL document delivery, full event log.

  • Next.js
  • Postgres (RLS)
  • TypeScript
  • AWS
J-209 · 2026$

poc-distribution

Referral fee distribution PoCs

Three parallel proofs-of-concept for scalable on-chain referral payouts: 1inch CumulativeMerkleDrop, Thirdweb Airdrop, and Splits Protocol. Live-tested on Polygon mainnet with gas benchmarks.

  • TypeScript
  • Solidity
  • Viem
  • Hardhat
  • Polygon
Inquire ↗
J-314 · 2025FREE

rawTxnAddressFinder

Raw transaction archaeology

JavaScript CLI that decodes raw Ethereum transactions and surfaces the signer address + nonce without needing an RPC. Great for forensics and cold-wallet recovery flows.

  • JavaScript
  • ethers.js
  • Node.js
Inquire ↗
J-087 · 2025$$$

zlerplabs.com

A personal sandbox

Long-running experiments blog — part playground, part portfolio, part accidental README. Runs on Next.js with a custom MDX pipeline and view-transitions-powered post navigation.

  • Next.js
  • MDX
  • Tailwind
  • Vercel
Inquire ↗
Section D · Local NewsWire Dispatches

LOCAL NEWS — A Career, In Wire Dispatches.

(AP) Wire · Quicknode
Jun 2022Present

Senior Engineer

By STAFF · Dateline: Miami

Built internal tooling for blockchain RPC observability, adopted across multiple product teams.

Shipped referral-fee distribution infrastructure handling on-chain payouts to thousands of developers.

Driving x402 payment rails + agentic infrastructure work — turning HTTP 402 from a curiosity into shipping rails for paid agent calls.

Contributor on the core platform powering RPC + streams for web3 developers.

(UPI) Wire · Zlerp Labs
Jan 2020Present

Builder-in-Residence (self)

By STAFF · Dateline: Unspecified

Personal R&D — smart-contract experiments, small web apps, occasional blog posts at zlerplabs.com.

Published open-source utilities like rawTxnAddressFinder and distribution PoCs.

(REUTERS) Wire · Prior startups
Aug 2015May 2022

Full-stack / Product Engineer

By STAFF · Dateline: Unspecified

Shipped consumer and B2B products across a handful of early-stage teams.

Owned frontend, backend, and a lot of 'whatever nobody else wants to touch'.

Section E · LettersTo the Editor

LETTERS — Wire the City Desk.

Correspondence welcomed · Brevity appreciated · All letters subject to editing for space

Not actively looking, but always happy to chat. The desk is presently operating out of Miami, FL. Use the form below, or reach us through any of the channels listed in the colophon.

The Zlerp Chronicle · © MCMLIII — MMXXVI— 30 —
Set on the overnight desk. Printed at dawn. Any errata to be corrected in the morning edition.
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