Hermes Agent (Nous Research) runs 24/7 on your hardware with its own memory and skills. It still hits the same wall as every other agent: websites block datacenter IPs. ProxyBase gives Hermes residential SOCKS5 it can provision and pay for autonomously, and the same box can sell its spare bandwidth for crypto.
Hermes observes its own work, reflects on what succeeded, and crystallizes it into reusable skills, Markdown files in ~/.hermes/skills/. The agent writes its own playbook over time.
Everything lives in a local SQLite database: working memory, episodic memory, procedures. No cloud dependency, no vendor lock-in, and it speaks 200+ models through OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
One-line install, and a $5/month VPS with 1 core / 1 GB is a supported setup when you use external LLM APIs. It's also the box that earns, below.
delegate_task spawns sub-agents with isolated contexts, and Hermes speaks MCP both directions. It can call the ProxyBase API the same way any agent tool would.
ProxyBase is designed so the agent does the whole purchase itself: four API calls, crypto payment, credentials delivered.
POST /v1/agents with a wallet address. That address is the entire account: no email, no password, no KYC. Hermes can generate the wallet itself.
Order bandwidth and pay with USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH, or SOL via MPP micropayments. Residential from $3/GB, credits never expire.
The order endpoint confirms payment and returns SOCKS5 credentials on api.proxybase.xyz:1080, in about a minute. Hermes polls the same way it would poll any job.
Export the credentials into the environment (http_proxy, https_proxy, or the SOCKS5 user/pass in whatever HTTP client Hermes' tools use). Browser and scraping tools now exit through a residential IP.
Hermes already runs 24/7 on a machine with an internet connection. That connection has value on the proxy market, and you don't need a second box to capture it.
The ProxyBase seller node routes residential SOCKS5 traffic through your idle bandwidth and pays you per GB in crypto. Payouts start at $1, no KYC. It's a lightweight daemon, not a second machine. Full setup here.
The node has a config file and logs. Have Hermes watch earnings, restart the daemon, and alert you on payouts. After a successful run, it can crystallize the routine into a skill.
When one box earns, five boxes earn. ProxyBase uses HD wallets, so a fleet of Hermes machines can be provisioned programmatically and pay into the same wallet. The fleet guide covers it.
Seller payouts run up to $3/GB at market pricing. A residential connection running the node full-time usually covers its internet bill and then some. Hermes keeps working on the same line, its own proxies paid for out of the earnings.
If Hermes browses, scrapes, or calls APIs from a datacenter IP, anti-bot systems flag it. Residential SOCKS5 makes its traffic look like a home user. Why agents need proxies covers the details.
Not yet. OpenClaw has the installable skill. For Hermes, the API flow is plain HTTP calls, which Hermes handles natively through its tool system or MCP.
Your wallet is the account. Payment is crypto micropayments, credentials come back through the API, and no human is involved at any step. Read the agent-first story.
Both work with ProxyBase. Hermes wins on self-improvement and running costs; OpenClaw wins on mature integrations. We compared them in depth here.
Buy residential SOCKS5 from $3/GB with crypto. Sell spare bandwidth from the same machine, with payouts from $1. No KYC in either direction.