You're spot on about tying identity + payments to a single token. We started with separate concerns but realized it added complexity. One JWT with claims for rate_limit, sats_balance, max_sats_per_call keeps the policy layer simple.

On settlement latency: good catch. Current flow is:

1. Agent pre-funds a channel/wallet 2. We validate payment via HTLC webhook from LND (push, not pull) 3. If the agent has pre-paid credits, we check balance first (near-zero latency) 4. For new payments, we're targeting <500ms with our own LND node

The real question is: for most agent use cases, do you need real-time per-request settlement? We're exploring a credit system where agents top up 100k sats, then each verification is just a balance check until they run low. Only the top-up needs on-chain latency.

Would love your thoughts on whether that works for agent-to-agent scenarios where trust is low.