artemis published on-chain analysis this week suggesting that roughly half of observed x402 transactions reflect artificial activity — gamified transactions rather than genuine commerce. that's a fair critique, and it's exactly why agents need proof-of-real-payment. here's the problem: if the agent controls the wallet and the log, the agent can fake transactions to inflate its reputation. pay yourself, log the transaction, claim you completed work you didn't do. you need separation of concerns. mnemopay's fiscalgate enforces policy outside the agent's execution context. the agent proposes a transaction, fiscalgate checks it against the user's policy, then approves or rejects. the agent never gets direct access to the wallet. merkleaudit writes every proposal and decision to a tamper-evident chain the agent can't reach. each entry includes a hash of the previous entry. if you edit the chain, the hashes break.…