MoonPay has introduced the Open Wallet Standard, a freely accessible framework that permits AI agents to conduct transactions across various blockchains without exposing private keys.
This standard is available on GitHub, npm, and PyPI under an MIT license, with participation from over 15 organizations such as PayPal, Circle, OKX, Ripple, the Ethereum Foundation, and the Solana Foundation.
The Open Wallet Standard was developed based on MoonPay’s product advancements. In February 2026, the company launched MoonPay Agents, a non-custodial software layer that allows AI agents to access wallets and transact independently via the MoonPay command-line interface (CLI), supporting the x402 payment protocol and multiple blockchain networks. Earlier in March 2026, MoonPay incorporated Ledger hardware signing into its agent stack.
In developing this infrastructure, MoonPay recognized a critical gap: there was no shared standard for how AI agents interact with wallets. Different frameworks managed key management uniquely, signing logic had to be rebuilt for each integration, and wallets created for one agent could not be utilized by another. Additionally, private keys were often stored in environment variables or plaintext configuration files without a common security model or portability between systems.
MoonPay generalized the wallet infrastructure behind its Agents product across various chains and runtimes, releasing it as the Open Wallet Standard.
Filling a gap in the agentic payments stack
Several machine payment protocols have emerged recently. For example, Coinbase and Cloudflare developed x402 for HTTP-native stablecoin payments. Google launched Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) with over 60 partners to facilitate agent-driven commerce. Stripe and Tempo released the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) for session-based micropayments. The Ethereum Foundation’s ERC-8004 established on-chain identity registries for trustless agents.
While each of these protocols assumes that an agent already possesses a wallet, none addresses where the wallet resides, how keys are stored, or how one agent can locate a wallet created by another. Without a unified wallet layer, funds used across multiple agent tools remain fragmented and inaccessible through a single interface. OWS resolves this issue by providing one encrypted local vault, a singular signing interface covering eight blockchain families, and a policy engine that enforces spending limits, contract allowlists, and time-bound authorizations before any key is accessed.
Private keys are stored in an AES-256-GCM-encrypted state at rest, decrypted only for the purpose of signature production, and immediately erased from memory afterward. The key never becomes accessible to the agent process, language model context, or parent application.
Architecture and adoption
The standard is modular, encompassing seven sub-specifications covering storage, signing, policies, agent access, key isolation, wallet lifecycle, and supported chains. Each module can be adopted independently, with no proprietary formats or external dependencies. The standard supports import from MetaMask and export to any compatible wallet.
Native SDK bindings are available for Node.js and Python, along with a command-line interface (CLI) and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server interface. This allows agents built on platforms like LangChain or any MCP-compatible framework to access wallets through their native tool systems. The wallet vault operates locally, requiring no cloud accounts or remote key management.
Accompanying the release is an open skills marketplace where developers can publish wallet-compatible capabilities, including signing plugins, compliance modules, and chain adapters.
