What is Velarum?

Velarum is a non-custodial Agent Payment protocol layer: it lets your AI agents and apps move money on-chain through one API and SDK, while the keys, signing, and final say stay entirely with the user. Velarum assembles unsigned transactions and indexes public on-chain events — it is the orchestration layer, not a wallet and not a custodian.

Non-custodial by design (HC-NC-1)

The Velarum server never holds a private key, mnemonic, or any signable material. Every transaction is signed and broadcast on the client side by a Signer you provide. This is a hard project constraint (HC-NC-1), not a setting — there is no mode in which Velarum can move your funds for you.

What Velarum is not

It is not a wallet (your keys stay with you), not a custodial service (Velarum holds zero signing material), and not a fee-on-transaction processor — Velarum charges SaaS subscription and per-call usage, never a percentage of payment volume (HC-NC-4).

Where this Quickstart goes

In the next four pages you will install the SDK, send your first testnet payment end-to-end, find testnet faucets, and pick your next reading path. The whole loop targets testnet only — Phase-0 is testnet-only by policy (ADR-NC-027).