BlockRun

Changelog

All notable changes to BlockRun.

[2026-05-24 — late]

Changed — Virtual Portrait enrollment dropped to $0.01 (parity with RealFace)

  • POST /api/v1/portrait/enroll: $0.50 → $0.01 USDC. Token360 charges nothing for asset storage, so per-enrollment margin was always trivial; the old $0.50 was friction without offsetting cost. Now matches RealFace pricing — both are 1¢ to encourage adoption, and we make our money on the downstream Seedance per-clip revenue.
  • All UI, docs, video-playground tooltips, and asset-storage comments updated to reflect the new price.

[2026-05-24]

Added — RealFace enrollment (real-person likeness, no KYC)

  • POST /api/v1/realface/init + POST /api/v1/realface/enroll — full RealFace flow now live. The rights-holder scans a QR on their phone and completes a brief liveness check (nod + blink, ~1 minute), BlockRun's backend uploads the face photo and waits for an upstream biometric match, returns a ta_xxxxxx id usable as real_face_asset_id on Seedance 2.0 / 2.0-fast. $0.01 USDC per enrollment (promotional pricing), one-time. See RealFace API reference.
  • No KYC required. No government ID, no account login, no name verification. Only a face-match between the live H5 capture and the photo you supply. Biometric data flows phone → upstream identity service directly, never touches BlockRun servers.
  • GET /api/v1/realface/status?groupId=… — free polling endpoint, used by the studio UI to detect H5 completion.
  • GET /api/v1/wallet/<address>/realfaces — symmetric to /portraits, lists a wallet's enrolled RealFaces.
  • blockrun.ai/studio/realface — web UI: connect wallet → upload image URL → click Start → QR + countdown → poll for H5 completion → sign payment → copy ta_xxx.
  • Video playground dropdown now combines Virtual Portrait + RealFace assets into a single real_face_asset_id selector, grouped by type.
  • Header Models dropdown adds "RealFace Studio".

Reversed — earlier 2026-05-22 "RealFace removed" entry

  • The 2026-05-22 changelog entry "Removed — RealFace" was based on an integration that was blocked by an upstream webhook bug at our inference partner. The partner shipped a fix on 2026-05-24; we verified the end-to-end flow (group active after H5 → photo upload → ta_xxx active in 6s → Seedance video generated in 86s using the enrolled face). The original conclusion that RealFace requires KYC was wrong — actual flow is liveness-only (nod + blink), no ID or account binding.

[2026-05-22]

Added — Virtual Portrait enrollment (no KYC)

  • POST /api/v1/portrait/enroll — $0.50 USDC per enrollment, x402-gated. Registers an AI-generated character image as a Virtual Portrait and returns a ta_xxxxxx id usable as real_face_asset_id on Seedance 2.0 / 2.0-fast. Settlement happens only after enrollment succeeds — no charge on upload failure. See Virtual Portrait API reference.
  • GET /api/v1/wallet/<address>/portraits — lists the portraits a wallet has enrolled. Free, rate-limited (20 req/hr/IP, shared with the wallet-reconciliation bucket).
  • blockrun.ai/studio/portrait — web UI: connect wallet → name + image URL → sign → copy ta_xxx. Existing portraits listed below the form.
  • Video playground at /models/bytedance-seedance-2.0-fast (and 2.0 Pro) now shows a dropdown of the connected wallet's enrolled portraits instead of asking users to paste a ta_xxx manually.
  • Header Models dropdown now exposes "Portrait Studio".

Removed — RealFace (real-person likeness) is no longer offered (reversed on 2026-05-24, see latest entry)

  • BlockRun does not offer real-person likeness in video generation. This conclusion was wrong — upstream had a webhook bug that made the group never transition to active; once fixed, the flow works without KYC. RealFace was reinstated on 2026-05-24.

Changed — Seedance defaults bumped to 720p + synced audio

  • /api/v1/videos/generations now defaults resolution: "720p" for all Seedance models (was 480p). Override by passing an explicit resolution (360p / 480p / 720p / 1080p / 4K).
  • /api/v1/videos/generations now defaults generate_audio: true for text-to-video Seedance calls (false for image-conditioned or real_face_asset_id calls, where audio defaults are off per upstream guidance). Pass an explicit boolean to override.
  • Output now matches JiMeng / BytePlus directly — same resolution, same multimodal audio path. Per-clip cost ≈ 2× the old 480p baseline because Seedance meters by tokens and 720p doubles the per-second count.
  • Updated pricing table: $0.46 / $1.19 / $1.49 per 5s 720p clip for 1.5-pro / 2.0-fast / 2.0 (was $0.22 / $0.57 / $0.71 at 480p, text-to-video).
  • tokensPerSecondAtDefault updated to 20,256 in the model catalog (was 10,128).

Fixed — Seedance copyright-filter UX

  • The video playground now distinguishes Seedance's content-policy rejections from generic errors. On rejection, users see a clear "You were not charged" message + suggestions (rephrase with generic descriptors, switch to Grok Imagine Video, or enroll a Virtual Portrait for consistent characters).

[2026-05-18]

Added — Surf crypto data partnership

  • /api/v1/surf/* — 83 crypto data endpoints in three flat price tiers ($0.001 / $0.005 / $0.02), covering CEX prices, on-chain SQL (sub-second ClickHouse, 80+ tables), Polymarket/Kalshi/dFlow prediction markets, wallet labels (smart-money, KOL, exchange), social mindshare, AI-curated news, and project/fund/token/wallet search. Payment settles 1:1 directly to Surf's treasury — BlockRun takes no margin in exchange for being the discovery + x402 layer. See Surf API reference.
  • blockrun_surf MCP tool added to the BlockRun MCP server.
  • Surf added as a partner in Ecosystem.

Added — Phone & Voice partnership (Bland.ai + Twilio)

  • /api/v1/voice/call — outbound AI conversation calls. $0.54 flat per call (up to 30 min, default 5 min). Bland.ai upstream.
  • /api/v1/phone/numbers/buy — provision a wallet-owned US/CA phone number for $5 (30-day lease). Twilio upstream. Ownership recorded in Firestore against the calling wallet — only that wallet can use the number as caller ID or renew it.
  • /api/v1/phone/numbers/renew — extend lease by 30 days for $5.
  • /api/v1/phone/numbers/list — list a wallet's active numbers.
  • GET /api/v1/voice/call/{id} — free polling endpoint for call status / transcript / recording.
  • See Phone & Voice API reference.

Added — BytePlus RealFace for Seedance video (deprecated 2026-05-22 — see Removed)

  • bytedance/seedance-2.0-fast and bytedance/seedance-2.0 now accept a real_face_asset_id parameter (ta_xxxxxx format) for face-reference image-to-video. Asset IDs are managed in BytePlus's RealFace catalog.
  • Superseded by Virtual Portrait enrollment (2026-05-22) — the API field name is preserved, but the only supported asset type is now a BlockRun-issued Virtual Portrait (POST /v1/portrait/enroll). Real-person likeness is not offered.

Added — Brand: Franklin → Franklin Agent

  • Renamed the autonomous-agent product across the entire site, docs, and SDKs. Repo (BlockRunAI/Franklin) and CSS unchanged; surface copy now consistently says "Franklin Agent" to disambiguate from the personal name.

Changed — Seedance pricing migrated to per-M-token

  • Old per-second pricing ($0.03–$0.30 / sec) is deprecated. New per-M-token pricing aligned with token360 upstream:
    • seedance-1.5-pro: $4.32/M tokens (flat, 480p default)
    • seedance-2.0-fast: $11.20/M (text-only) or $6.60/M (with image input)
    • seedance-2.0: $14/M (text-only) or $8.60/M (with image input)
  • Default resolution is 480p (token360 default). Effective rate at 10,128 tok/sec.

Added — Rate-limit transparency

  • 429 responses now carry Retry-After (RFC-7231 standard) + X-RateLimit-Source: <provider> headers, plus body fields code: "RATE_LIMITED", source, retry_after_seconds. Clients can fail over to a same-tier model on a different provider, or honor the retry interval. See Rate Limits — there is no platform-side QPS/RPM/TPM quota on paid inference; upstream provider limits apply.

[2026-04-25]

Models

  • Added openai/gpt-5.5 — released 2026-04-23, first fully retrained base since GPT-4.5. 1M context, 128K output, native agent + computer use. Pricing: $5.00 / $30.00 per 1M tokens.
  • Promoted openai/gpt-5.5 to FEATURED_MODEL_IDS (replaces openai/gpt-5.4 as the OpenAI flagship surfaced on the homepage and discover pages).

SDK Updates

  • Python SDK (blockrun-llm) 0.17.0: PREMIUM_TIERS["MEDIUM"] primary now openai/gpt-5.5; gpt-5.4 demoted to first fallback. estimate_cost baseline rebased from $2.50/$15 to $5.00/$30 to match the new flagship. __version__ and VERSION reconciled (was 0.16.1 vs 0.15.0).
  • TypeScript SDK (@blockrun/llm) 1.11.0: catalog refreshed with openai/gpt-5.5. VERSION and package.json reconciled (was 1.9.0 vs 1.10.1).
  • Go SDK (blockrun-llm-go) 0.4.0: RoutingPremium.TierMedium primary now openai/gpt-5.5 (was gpt-5.4).

[2026-04-17]

Added — xAI Grok Imagine

  • Video generation — new endpoint POST /api/v1/videos/generations with xai/grok-imagine-video ($0.050/sec, 8-second clips, text or image-to-video). The endpoint handles xAI's async job + polling internally so callers get the MP4 URL in a single request. See Video Generation.
  • Grok Imagine image models — xai/grok-imagine-image ($0.02/image) and xai/grok-imagine-image-pro ($0.07/image) added to POST /api/v1/images/generations.
  • Grok 4.20 chat models (hidden, API-routable) — xai/grok-4.20-reasoning, xai/grok-4.20-non-reasoning, xai/grok-4.20-multi-agent. 2M context, vision-capable, $2/M in · $6/M out.

Added — Permanent media URLs via GCS backup

  • Every generated image and video is now mirrored to BlockRun's Google Cloud Storage bucket and returned through a blockrun-hosted proxy URL (/api/media/...). Upstream URLs from imgen.x.ai and vidgen.x.ai are temporary — the returned url is permanent.
  • Image/video responses now include:
    • url — permanent proxy URL (falls back to upstream if the backup step fails)
    • source_url — original upstream URL (for debugging / comparison)
    • backed_up — boolean indicating whether GCS mirroring succeeded

API Changes

  • GET /api/v1/models now includes video models with billing_mode: "per_second" and pricing: { per_second, default_duration_seconds, max_duration_seconds }.

[2026-03-24]

API Changes

  • /api/v1/models now returns extended metadata for each model: name, description, context_window, max_output, and categories
  • Model categories indicate capabilities: chat, reasoning, coding, vision

Models

  • 33 visible models across 9 providers (Base), 31 on Solana
  • Added GPT-5.4 Mini ($0.75/$4.50, 400K context)
  • Added GPT-5.4 Nano, GPT-5.3, GPT-5.3 Codex
  • Added Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context), Claude Sonnet 4.6
  • Added Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3 Pro Preview, Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite
  • Added NVIDIA Kimi K2.5 (free tier)
  • Removed xAI/Grok, Qwen, and legacy GPT-4 family from visible lineup (hidden, still routable via API)

SDK Updates

  • TypeScript SDK (@blockrun/llm) v1.4.3: Model type now includes categories, contextWindow, maxOutput, properly mapped from API
  • MCP Server (@blockrun/mcp) v0.4.2: blockrun_models shows context window and categories, smart routing updated to current models

MCP Smart Routing

  • fast: Gemini Flash, GPT-5 Mini
  • balanced: GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet 4.6
  • powerful: GPT-5.4, Claude Opus 4.6
  • cheap: NVIDIA free models, DeepSeek, Gemini Flash
  • reasoning: o3, o1, DeepSeek Reasoner

[Unreleased]

Added

  • Continue Integration — ClawRouter merged as a native provider in Continue (32K+ ⭐), the open-source AI code assistant. Users can now select ClawRouter directly in Continue's provider settings for cost-optimized model routing. (PR #11751)

Coming Soon

  • Streaming support
  • Additional AI providers

[1.0.0] - 2025-12

Added

  • Initial public release
  • x402 v2 protocol support
  • OpenAI models (GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini, o1, o1-mini)
  • Anthropic models (Claude Opus 4, Sonnet 4, Haiku 4.5)
  • Google models (Gemini 2.5 Pro, Gemini 2.5 Flash)
  • xAI models (Grok 4)
  • DeepSeek models (V3, R1)
  • Meta models via Together.ai (Llama 3.3 70B)
  • Qwen models via Together.ai (Qwen 2.5 72B)
  • Mistral models (Mistral Large)
  • Python SDK (blockrun-llm)
  • TypeScript SDK (@blockrun/llm)
  • Base network support (USDC)
  • CDP Facilitator integration

Technical

  • EIP-3009 TransferWithAuthorization for gasless payments
  • EIP-712 typed data signing
  • Automatic retry with payment on 402 response
  • OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions API

SDK Versions

Python SDK (blockrun-llm)

[0.1.0] - 2025-12

  • Initial release
  • LLMClient with chat() and chat_completion() methods
  • AsyncLLMClient for async usage
  • x402 v2 protocol support
  • Error handling with APIError and PaymentError

TypeScript SDK (@blockrun/llm)

[0.1.0] - 2025-12

  • Initial release
  • LLMClient class with full TypeScript types
  • chat() and chatCompletion() methods
  • listModels() for available models
  • x402 v2 protocol support
  • Error handling with APIError and PaymentError

Version Policy

BlockRun follows Semantic Versioning:

  • MAJOR - Breaking API changes
  • MINOR - New features, backward compatible
  • PATCH - Bug fixes, backward compatible

Release Notes

For detailed release notes, see the GitHub releases page for each repository.