Crypto Researcher (Blockchain, Web3)

Saifuro checks payments that AI agents try to make. An agent asks to spend, we compare the request with a mandate a human approved earlier, and the answer comes back signed so the receiving side can verify it. There's escrow on Base and Solana for trades between agents, and settlement is in USDC, onchain. We never hold customer funds. The docs are public at docs.saifuro.com, and the people who use them are developers building agents and the teams selling APIs to those agents.

Good numbers on agent payments are hard to find. How many agents pay for anything, what they buy, which rails they use, where the money settles. We see a slice of it through our own check, and the rest sits on Base and Solana for anyone who can read a chain. Your job is to be the person who knows: for our product, for our customers and in public, with your name on the work. Call it research analyst, onchain analyst, blockchain analyst or crypto research lead if you prefer.

What you'd be doing

• The numbers. Agent payment activity on Base and Solana: USDC flows, x402 calls, escrow releases, who pays whom and how often. Dashboards the team and our customers use every week, built on Dune, Artemis or your own scripts against an RPC.

• The protocols. x402, AP2, ACP, ERC-8004 and MCP change every month. You read the specs and the pull requests that matter, write a one-page brief, and tell our protocol engineer and product manager what to adopt now and what to wait on.

• The reports. A public report on the state of agent payments every quarter, with the dataset published next to it, and shorter notes in between: one rail, one chain, one market. Your name goes on all of them.

• The market. The other teams building payment rails for agents, the wallets agents keep their keys in, the marketplaces where they buy. A map that sales and product work from, updated every month.

• What's next. Early next year the sandbox opens to every developer, and the first public report goes out with it. Ethereum, Arbitrum and Polygon follow next year, and each chain is a new dataset. Agent identity comes later in 2027, and the question of who the agents are starts with your data.

What we need from you

• You've published crypto research that strangers read: reports, a newsletter, Dune dashboards, a paper, or threads with your own numbers in them.

• You can pull those numbers yourself from a block explorer, Dune or an RPC, and you can tell when they're wrong.

• You live in one of the countries we can hire in.

Beyond these requirements, we'll support you in learning whatever else the role demands. If your experience is relevant but your title differs, we would still like to hear from you. Work outside a job counts too: open source, hackathons and your own projects.

It helps, but isn't required, if you've worked at a research shop, a fund or an exchange, if you've written about stablecoins or payments, if you write SQL or Python, if you've followed x402 or MCP since they launched, or if you've presented at a crypto conference.

Pay and benefits

• Salary $120,000 to $165,000. That's the US range. Outside the US we pay in USD, or in USDC if you'd rather, and set the offer against the top of the local market.

• Equity: 0.12% of Saifuro, vesting.

• Health: 100% of medical, dental and vision premiums for US employees, 75% for dependents. Outside the US, the local plan through our employer of record, or $300 a month toward private cover.

• 25 days of paid vacation plus your public holidays, and we close between Christmas and New Year.

• 14 weeks of paid parental leave, for any parent.

• A laptop and $1,000 toward your workspace.

• $1,500 a year for learning, conferences included. That's on top of the events you'll attend for work: six to eight a year, planned a quarter ahead, on the company.

• The data tools you need, paid for: Dune, Artemis, Nansen or whatever the question calls for, plus RPC access to Base and Solana.

Hours are flexible. The one thing we ask is to be online from 14:00 to 17:00 UTC, when the team overlaps for calls and quick questions. That's a window, not the working day. The rest of your hours are yours to arrange. If that window is the middle of your night, say so and we'll work something out.

You can combine this with a job at another company, as long as the two don't conflict. For this role that means no paid research on agent payments for anyone else.

How to apply

Email with the subject "Crypto Researcher". Attach your resume and include links to two pieces of research you're proud of, and to your LinkedIn, X or GitHub if you have them. Let us know your country of residence. We'll reply with the next steps.