XKOVA: Building the Payment Layer That Brings Avalanche to Everyone
How a small team turned a Bounty9000 win into the first consumer front-end for Wyoming's state-issued stablecoin, and why agentic payments might change how we think about blockchain adoption.
Blockchain faces a persistent adoption hurdle. The tech works. The infrastructure keeps getting better. But ask someone outside the ecosystem to send a stablecoin payment and watch the friction unfold. They’ll hit a wall of seed phrases, gas fees, and wallet setup screens before they ever complete a transaction.
XKOVA is trying to fix that.
Built as an Avalanche L1, XKOVA is a digital payments company focused on making crypto payments as simple as sending a text message. No wallet required. No gas fees. No prior crypto knowledge needed. Their pitch is straightforward: if blockchain payments are going to go mainstream, they need to feel invisible to the people using them.
From Bounty9000 to Codebase
XKOVA’s story starts with the Retro9000 program. Co-founder Chris Fusillo entered Bounty9000, Avalanche’s developer competition, and built the XKOVA L1 on Fuji Testnet in under a month. He took first place.
That win led to selection for Avalanche’s Codebase accelerator (Season 2 cohort), an incubator program for early-stage Web3 startups building on the network. Since then, the team has moved fast. XKOVA has received investment from Avalanche and has gone from testnet prototype to a working product with Android and iOS apps in early access.
The team is lean. Co-founders Chris Fusillo and Candice Jarrett run the operation. Fusillo handles the technical side, drawing on his background in blockchain development. Jarrett brings fintech and consumer growth experience, focusing on getting stablecoins into the hands of everyday users.
What XKOVA Actually Does
At its core, XKOVA provides white-label payment infrastructure. Protocols and enterprises integrate through a single API/SDK and get a branded payment front-end their users interact with. Under the hood, transactions run on Avalanche using USDC as the native token.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
P2P payments via email or SMS. Users send tokens through channels they already use. No wallet addresses, no QR codes.
E-commerce checkout with crypto. Merchants plug in XKOVA’s tools and accept stablecoin payments alongside traditional methods.
Non-custodial wallets. Users maintain control of their funds even though the experience feels like a regular fintech app.
Built-in loyalty rewards. Payment flows include reward mechanics that keep users engaged.
The company reports merchants see up to 80% lower transaction fees compared to traditional payment processors. For businesses operating on thin margins, that number matters.
Wyopay and Wyoming’s Stablecoin
XKOVA’s most high-profile move so far is Wyopay, a consumer front-end for Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). If you haven’t been following this, FRNT is a big deal. It’s the first fully backed, state-issued stablecoin in the United States. Wyoming created it, and it runs on Avalanche.
The hurdle was access. Having a state-issued stablecoin is one thing. Getting regular people to use it is another. XKOVA built Wyopay as the first consumer-facing application for FRNT, deployed initially on Avalanche’s Fuji Testnet as part of the Wyoming Stable Token Pilot Program.
This is where XKOVA’s approach to user experience becomes tangible. Instead of asking Wyoming residents to figure out wallets and bridges, Wyopay gives them a familiar payment interface powered by blockchain rails they never have to see.
The Agentic Payments Bet
Here’s where things get interesting. XKOVA has been leaning hard into what they call “Agentic Payments for Humans & Agents.” The idea is that AI agents, autonomous programs that browse, shop, and transact on behalf of users, are going to need payment infrastructure too.
Think about it. If an AI agent books your flight, orders your groceries, and pays your subscriptions, it needs a way to handle money. XKOVA is building for that future with:
EIP-8004 compatibility. This Ethereum standard enables trustless AI agents to transact on-chain. XKOVA is positioning as an early adopter.
Policy-controlled spending and session keys. Users set rules for how agents spend, maintaining oversight without micromanaging every transaction.
MCP/X402 readiness. Compatibility with Coinbase and Cloudflare’s x402 protocol for instant stablecoin micropayments over HTTP.
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) support. AI agents discover products, build carts, and complete purchases through structured payment flows.
Whether agentic commerce takes off in line with XKOVA’s thesis remains to be seen. But they’re building the plumbing early, and that matters if this space develops the way many in the industry expect.
Engaging Beyond the Code
XKOVA isn’t only shipping product. The team has been active in policy and industry conversations. Both co-founders joined the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, to discuss how regulation impacts blockchain startups. They also sponsored the Crypto Banking, Compliance, and Payments Summit at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
On the education side, XKOVA Academy offers developer learning resources, including courses on agentic payments. They also run “Business Pulse by XKOVA,” a podcast covering the intersection of blockchain and business.
For a two-person team, the surface area of activity is notable. It signals a company trying to establish credibility across multiple fronts: technical, regulatory, and educational.
What to Watch
XKOVA is still early. The team is small, funding is modest ($50K from Avalanche according to PitchBook), and the apps are in beta. But the pieces they’re assembling tell a coherent story: consumer-grade payment UX on Avalanche, real regulatory engagement, and a forward bet on AI-powered commerce.
For the Avalanche ecosystem, XKOVA represents the kind of project that addresses one of blockchain’s most stubborn challenges. All the throughput and low fees in the world don’t matter if regular people find the experience confusing. By abstracting that complexity away, XKOVA is working to bring the next wave of users onto Avalanche without them even realizing it.
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