LensLlama

LensLlama is a decentralized stock photography marketplace that revolutionizes image licensing through the x402 HTTP payment protocol, enabling instant licensing without monthly subscriptions.

The x402 Advantage: When you request a paid image, the server responds with HTTP 402 Payment Required and payment details in headers. The user's wallet signs the transaction, and the facilitator handles gas fees and batches transactions, making micropayments economical. This transforms stock photography from a multi-step transaction flow into a single HTTP request.

Agent-Ready Architecture: LensLlama is built for the future of autonomous AI commerce. AI agents can discover, pay for, and license images programmatically without human intervention - just standard HTTP requests. No browser extensions, no wallet popups, just code.

Self-Licensing Images: Every image would embeds its licensing URL in EXIF/XMP metadata. When images are shared on social media, blogs, or anywhere on the internet, they carry their own "buy me" link. Anyone who finds the image can license it properly, creating passive income for photographers. We hope to use C2PA in the future to embed verifiably secure metadata. We also hope to create a plugin that finds the metadata in images and fulfills the licensing with right-click.

Fair revenue. 100% of revenue goes to the photographers.

Decentralized Storage: Full-resolution images are encrypted with AES-256 and stored on Filecoin. Watermarked previews are publicly accessible. Only licensed buyers can decrypt and download the original.

This creates a marketplace where images license themselves, AI agents are first-class customers, and photographers earn fair revenue instantly.

Technical Architecture & Implementation

Core Stack: Next.js with TypeScript, TailwindCSS for styling, and Neon Postgres with Drizzle ORM for data persistence, FileCoin for image storage, and x402 (USDC) for licence payment. The app runs on Vercel with API routes handling both frontend and backend logic.

Blockchain Integration (Base): x402 transactions use USDC for stable pricing.

Authentication (Privy): Privy SDK provides email/social login with embedded wallets. Users don't need existing crypto wallets - Privy creates one automatically. This was crucial for onboarding photographers who aren't crypto-native. The embedded wallet seamlessly signs EIP-712 payment authorizations without leaving the app. Signing can happen under-the-hood too.

ENS Identity (NameStone): We integrated ENS subdomain registration so photographers can claim human-readable names like lenny.lensllama.eth. We use NameStone's gasless claiming API - photographers get web3 identity without paying gas fees. The ENS name becomes their photographer profile URL and would be embedded in image metadata for attribution.

x402 Payment Protocol. We forked @coinbase/x402 and opened a pull request to add ERC-6492 signature validation support. Why? Coinbase Smart Wallets (used by Privy) aren't deployed until their first transaction, but standard ECDSA signature verification fails for undeployed contracts. We want to contribute to the space.

Storage (Filecoin): We used @filoz/synapse-sdk for Filecoin Onchain Cloud uploads. Each image gets processed twice:

• Watermarked preview: Unencrypted, publicly accessible via CID
• Full resolution: AES-256-CBC encrypted before upload

Partner Technology Benefits: •⁠ ⁠x402 enabled fast and affordable payment rails to guard content behind a known protocol (HTTP) •⁠ ⁠Privy: Eliminated the biggest UX barrier - "connect wallet" friction. Email login creates a wallet automatically. •⁠ ⁠Filecoin: Permanent, decentralized storage with content addressing. No vendor lock-in, verifiable integrity. •⁠ ⁠ENS: Powers photographer usernames.