↓ scroll · zoom · morph · move your mouse

Zach Perlman

Engineer · Web3 infrastructure · real-time systems · the fun parts of the web

00 — origin

Fifteen years — following the gravity of the craft into whatever room it lives in.

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.

10+
Years shipping
81
Public repos
EVM
Chain of choice
3
Coffee / day
01 — constellations

Things I’ve built.

01 · 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.

TypeScriptViemSolidityNode.js
02 · 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.

TypeScriptNext.jsViemEVM
03 · 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.jsViemWagmiTailwind
04 · 2026

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.jsTypeScriptPostgresx402
05 · 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.

TypeScriptViemOpenAIx402
06 · 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.jsTypeScriptOpenAIx402
07 · 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.

TypeScriptViemNext.js
08 · 2026

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.jsSolidityViemMDX
09 · 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.

TypeScriptNext.jsPostgresAWS
10 · 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.jsPostgres (RLS)TypeScriptAWS
11 · 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.

TypeScriptSolidityViemHardhatPolygon
12 · 2025

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.

JavaScriptethers.jsNode.js
13 · 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.jsMDXTailwindVercel
02 — trajectory

Where I’ve orbited.

  1. 2022.06 now
    Senior Engineer at Quicknode
    • 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.
  2. 2020.01 now
    Builder-in-Residence (self) at Zlerp Labs
    • Personal R&D — smart-contract experiments, small web apps, occasional blog posts at zlerplabs.com.
    • Published open-source utilities like rawTxnAddressFinder and distribution PoCs.
  3. 2015.08 2022.05
    Full-stack / Product Engineer at Prior startups
    • 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'.
03 — make contact

Let’s talk.

Not actively looking, but always happy to chat. Email is fastest; everything else is async.

· transmissionSYN
Skip to content