3h ago
. @coinbase introduced x402 a few months ago, and now it's catching fire.
What's x402, and why is it getting attention? 🧠👇
x402 is an open, internet-native payment standard built on top of HTTP that enables micropayments, especially between services or AI agents, rather than just humans at checkout.
Think AI agents paying per request, APIs charging per call or creators earning per view - payment is onchain and by stablecoin.
It was initiated by @coinbase, and adopted by @google for the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).
🎯 Why it matters
Traditional payment rails (cards, bank transfers) aren’t built for agent-to-agent, machine-to-machine, ultra-low-value transactions. They have friction, fees, setup burdens.
With x402 you can monetize individual API calls, content accesses, data-feeds without forcing the user into a full subscription. That enables pay-per-use business models.
Especially relevant in the age of autonomous AI agents: these agents can pay other agents or services directly, without humans in the loop, using x402 as the payment protocol.
🧠What crypto projects are adopting x402?
- @pingobserver - first token minted by x402
- @heurist_ai
- @virtuals_io - several of the Virtuals agents are using the x402 protocol
- @questflow
- @AnchorBrowser
- @GoKiteAI announced its partnership with @brevis_zk this week for privacy around payments with agents, it uses x402
- @Cloudflare Agents SDK + Google A2A payment protocol
- @PayAINetwork
- @thirdweb
- @flock_io announced it is adding x402 into FLock API Platform
In @a16zcrypto report:
"AI agent economy could hit $30 trillion by 2030 and crypto may be the only viable payment rail for AI agents."
And x402 is exploding with 19K+ users in a single day, 175k txns, $359K in volume.
We could be seeing millions in volume within a week.
4.25K
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