Settlement

Running decentralized memory infrastructure costs money — bytes stored, reads, writes. Settlement is how that usage is paid for in a way both sides can trust: the user can verify the bill, and the operator can prove the amount owed — without either trusting the other’s database.

Many-to-one settlement

Recording every billable event on-chain would cost more in gas than the events themselves. Instead:

1. Meter off-chain. Every read/write through the Persistence boundary produces a usage delta, signed by the agent’s wallet, accumulated into a per-user running total (configurable pricing).
2. Commit the cumulative total on-chain via an ERC-8183 settlement channel — one transaction per flush, regardless of how many operations it covers. The chain only ever records the latest cumulative number, signed by both parties.
3. Audit against the Hub. Because the Hub is decentralized storage, the billed dimensions are publicly verifiable — neither side relies on the other’s records.

Two running totals expose the agent’s state at any moment: settled (already committed on-chain) and unsettled (owed).

Using it

Metering and settlement run through a Server-connected client:

from unibase_membase.client import MembaseClient
from unibase_membase.core.persistence import Wallet

client = MembaseClient(wallet=Wallet.from_key("0x..."),
                       server_url="https://your-membase-server")
# ... reads/writes accrue metered usage ...
# Flush the unsettled balance on-chain (transferFrom → createJob → fund → submit):
await client.settle_metering()

When to flush is the client’s choice: after every job to keep the unsettled balance small, or daily/weekly to minimize gas. An operator may require a flush once the unsettled balance crosses a threshold.

Chain-agnostic by design

ERC-8183 generalizes channeled settlement across token standards and chains, so the only chain-specific part is deployment configuration — Membase itself is not bound to one chain. The default token is configurable (commerce.default_token, e.g. UB).

The operator-run Server is the only non-decentralized piece (paying gas can’t be decentralized without re-implementing the chain). It sees only signed metering deltas and wallet addresses — never your memory.