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The Context Gateway is ODL’s commercial layer on top of the open protocol. It is not part of the protocol and holds no preferential role in it — it uses the same permissionless surfaces any builder uses, so anyone could stand up an equivalent gateway (their own OAuth, their own USD billing). Direct SDK users bypass it entirely. It is a convenience, not a dependency — the way enterprise builders consume the protocol with familiar auth and fiat billing.
Not to be confused with the RPC gateway, which is the protocol’s sequencer (it anchors transactions to L1 and settles escrow fees). The RPC gateway is protocol infrastructure on the decentralization roadmap; the Context Gateway is an unprivileged, replaceable commercial app. See the DP RPC settlement note.
It exists so a builder who wants OAuth and a USD invoice does not have to hold tokens or sign EIP-712 payloads themselves; the Gateway translates between that world and the protocol’s.
Status. The Context Gateway, its OAuth/auth surfaces, and USD metering are live as an ODL product. The SDK is live.

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What it provides

The Gateway’s USD billing is a separate rail from the protocol’s token escrow. A builder pays the Gateway in fiat; the Gateway handles its relationship to the protocol. Direct protocol users pay the escrow rail in VANA or a whitelisted token.

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How builders consume the protocol

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The SDK

There is one builder-facing library, @opendatalabs/vana-sdk:
  • Connect flow — builders requesting access to individual users’ data use the SDK’s Connect/Direct flow (createDirectDataController, useDirectVanaConnect).
  • Lower-level primitives — the same package exposes encryption, decryption, permissions, and identity primitives used inside apps, Personal Servers, and DLP applications.