V5 Beta is Live
x402 Agents can pay for themselves · 0.001 USDC/req

Environment verification
for autonomous agents.

environment.market_state · 28 exchanges · fail-closed

Headless Oracle is the proposed reference implementation of environment.market_state — an open PR on Mastercard's Verifiable Intent repo for a cryptographically verifiable constraint type covering market venue state in agentic execution. Ed25519-signed attestations. 60-second TTL. Agents pay 0.001 USDC per request via x402 on Base mainnet.

Proposed member of the environment.* constraint family — PR #9 on Mastercard's Verifiable Intent repo · operational since 2026-02-18

NYSE · XNYS NASDAQ · XNAS B3 · XBSP LSE · XLON Euronext · XPAR SIX · XSWX Milan · XMIL Helsinki · XHEL Stockholm · XSTO Istanbul · XIST Tadawul · XSAU DFM · XDFM JSE · XJSE Shanghai · XSHG Shenzhen · XSHE HKEX · XHKG Tokyo · XJPX Seoul · XKRX BSE · XBOM NSE · XNSE SGX · XSES Sydney · XASX NZX · XNZE CME · XCBT NYMEX · XNYM Cboe · XCBO Coinbase · XCOI Binance · XBIN
REST API  ·  MCP server for Claude & agent frameworks  ·  x402 micropayments  ·  llms.txt
NYSE · Live Market Status
cryptographically verified click to inspect ↓
—
Fetching live receipt…

28 exchanges. Global 24/7 coverage.

The scheduling complexity a timezone library was not built to solve.

67
exchange-specific
holidays
different per country, non-overlapping
18
early close
days
NYSE closes at 1:00 PM, not 4:00 PM
8
DST
transitions
incl. 3-week US/EU phantom window
490
lunch break
sessions
Tokyo 11:30–12:30, HK 12:00–13:00
728
weekend days
across 28 venues
per calendar year

A timezone library handles zero of these. Headless Oracle handles all of them.

I-D Filed · May 11, 2026 PR #9 · Open · v0.5.11-draft

The Agent Execution Stack Composes in Three Layers

Autonomous finance is assembling its stack. Mastercard's agreed acquisition of BVNK — programmable stablecoin payment rails, for up to $1.8B — brings on-chain settlement into the picture. What that stack still lacks is a verification layer: cryptographic proof of external market state before an agent commits capital. That's the gap Headless Oracle is built to fill.

Layer 1 · Authorization
Mastercard Verifiable Intent
The agent is permitted to execute this action
Layer 2 · Execution
BVNK / Mastercard Rails
Programmable stablecoin settlement moves
Layer 3 · Verification
Headless Oracle (proposed)
Cryptographic proof the market was open at execution time

An agent with authorization and rails but without verified market state has no auditable proof of what external conditions it acted on. The External State Attestation RFC (PR #9, open) proposes the third layer: a signed, independently verifiable record that the market was open before execution.

PR #9 · agent-intent/verifiable-intent /v5/compliance /v5/stack

Open Standards

Apache 2.0 — designed to be implemented by any operator, not just Headless Oracle

SMA Protocol
Signed Market Attestation
The canonical format for a cryptographically signed market-state receipt. Ed25519, 60s TTL, fail-closed semantics.
github.com/LembaGang/sma-protocol →
MPAS-1.0
Multi-Party Attestation
Quorum consensus across N independent oracle operators. 2-of-3 means no single compromised operator can forge a result.
github.com/LembaGang/mpas-spec →
APTS-1.0
Agent Pre-Trade Safety
6-step checklist every autonomous agent must complete before executing a trade. Vendor-neutral. CI badge included.
github.com/LembaGang/agent-pretrade-safety-standard →
49
countries active
this week
~1,300
schedule edge cases
handled annually
0
execution errors
since launch

Think it's simple?

Common assumptions about market schedules, and what the data actually shows.

What you assume What actually happens
NYSE closes at 4pm ET Except Good Friday (1pm), day before July 4th (1pm), Christmas Eve (1pm), and emergency halts at any time
Tokyo is open 9am–3pm JST There's a lunch break 11:30–12:30 every trading day. Your bot thinks it's open. It's not.
"Just use a timezone library" pytz handles DST. It doesn't handle that NYSE closes for Juneteenth but LSE doesn't, or that Hong Kong closes for Lunar New Year but Singapore doesn't.
"I'll hardcode the holidays" Which year? 2026 holidays differ from 2027. When a holiday falls on a weekend, some exchanges shift to Friday, others Monday, others don't shift.
"I'll check once at market open" Circuit breaker at 2:47pm. Your cached "OPEN" is now wrong. Your bot trades into a halted market.

The Failure Mode

A liquidation bot holds OUSG (tokenized US Treasuries) as collateral. At 20:30 UTC on March 9, a health factor drops below 1.0. The bot fires.

NYSE closed 30 minutes ago. The bot's hardcoded UTC offset was correct yesterday — but DST shifted overnight. It still thinks the market is open. The liquidation executes against a closed market. Settlement fails.

At-risk exposure: $13M–$19.5M bad debt per protocol

DST is predictable. Circuit breakers aren't. Both break the same assumption.

The Fix

Don't Assume. Verify.

Before execution, ask. Every response is Ed25519 signed. Verify the signature yourself — no trust required. If status is anything other than OPEN, your bot halts.

Verify any receipt yourself — no server needed →

From zero to verified market status in 60 seconds

No signup required for the demo. Free key unlocks 500 req/day.

1 Query the demo endpoint — no signup 
curl https://headlessoracle.com/v5/demo?mic=XNYS

Returns a signed JSON receipt instantly. Swap XNYS for any supported MIC code.

2 Get a free API key (instant, no card) 
curl -X POST https://headlessoracle.com/v5/keys/instant \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"agent_id":"my-trading-bot"}'

Returns a key instantly in the response. 500 calls/day, all 28 exchanges. Or click here to get one now.

3 Add 3 lines to your agent 
const r = await fetch('https://headlessoracle.com/v5/status?mic=XNYS',
  { headers: { 'X-Oracle-Key': process.env.ORACLE_KEY } }).then(r => r.json());
if (r.status !== 'OPEN') return halt('Market not open — status: ' + r.status);

Fail-closed by design. Anything other than OPEN halts your agent. Receipt is Ed25519-signed for audit.

Get a free API key instantly — no email required

500 calls/day. No signup. No credit card. Key appears in seconds.

Full API Docs
GET /v5/demo 
{
  "receipt_id": "...",
  "status": "WAITING_FOR_TEST..."
}