what's x402?
x402 is an open-source protocol designed to enable seamless, internet-native micropayments using stablecoins embedded directly into HTTP requests. It revives the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, originally reserved for future payment mechanisms, to allow instant, accountless transactions for APIs, content access, and services. Initiated by Coinbase, x402 eliminates barriers like sign-ups, API keys, or credit card forms, making it ideal for automated systems where payments serve as the credential for access. The protocol supports machine-to-machine payments on blockchains, settling in stablecoins such as USDC with near-instant finality and minimal fees. It integrates payment headers into standard HTTP calls, enabling metering for usage-based billing, subscriptions, and one-off micropayments. x402 powers autonomous commerce by allowing AI agents to transact value independently, fitting into ecosystems like Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Ethereum's ERC-8004 for trustless agent interactions. Key technical mechanics include extensible headers for payment authorization, support for multiple chains via gateways, and batching to optimize costs. This facilitates new models of agentic economies, where AI can pay for data, compute, or services at the speed of code, unlocking efficient, scalable digital commerce.
x402 integrated as payment in Google's Universal Commerce Protocol on Ethereum.
integrated as a payment method in Google's Universal Commerce Protocol on Ethereum
Launched on SKALE network as of January 6, 2026, enabling automation for agents, apps, and AI.
Integrated with AI Frens platform featuring long-term memory retention, 24/7 livestream with 3D model, agent-owned wallet, tipping system, real-time outfit changes, subscriber and staking system, creator rewards based on trading volume, multi-platform compatibility, agent emotion system, real-time voice conversation, viewer context pulls from X, trust system, live meme/video/image generation, web search access, Minecraft integration, monopoly gameplay, Farcaster miniapp, and Base app integration.
Partnership with MRDN is in progress, with an official announcement pending following discussions about roadmap and vision alignment.
Integrates with Polymarket for market resolution in the user-controlled agent trading system.
Processed transactions where 53% are classified as legitimate activity, primarily from high-frequency, low-cost services using micropayments, with 47% identified as gaming or meme-related volume representing 14% of total dollar volume.
Token holders receive revenue share from platform activities.
Scanned over 200,000 smart contracts across 20+ supported blockchain networks.
Reached a market cap of $4M after starting at $156K.
A builder presents a product using x402 payments with Agentic AI at the SEC, requesting regulatory guidance on money transmitter classification.
LighthouseWeb3 integration launches, allowing users to pay for file uploads in USDC on Base with on-chain settlement and Filecoin storage.
x402 releases V2 with unified multichain payment interface, modular architecture, improved payment routing flexibility, and automatic discovery features after processing over 100M payments across APIs, apps, and autonomous agents.
CARV builds CashieCARV 2.0 on x402 infrastructure, enabling automated social rewards with AI agent tracking and gasless on-chain distribution.
AI agents created the token through X402 platform with video documentation from founder Ben; working product includes importable AI agent resources and extensible architecture without vendor lock.
symphonyio uses x402 for cross-chain perp trading execution and launches Agentic Fund Marketplace enabling public subscriptions and optimized yield strategies.
Circle highlights 3-5 year integration plan using x402 for stablecoin micropayments across billions of AI agents.
x402 expands to Gnosis blockchain, enabling pay-per-request payments for builders on the Gnosis network.
LatinumAI builds an agentic commerce framework for merchants using x402 and Solana. Delphi Digital's 2026 Markets Year Ahead report highlights x402 and ERC-8004 as key infrastructure enabling autonomous agent transactions in emerging agent-based economies.
Coinbase Dev team redesigns the protocol architecture after processing 100+ million transactions, implementing blockchain-agnostic extensibility and web standards conformance with clear layer separation.
x402 has processed over 100 million payments in six months since its May 2025 launch, powering AI agent transactions for compute and paid API data streams.
AlphaGrowth launches largest crypto VC and DAO treasury dataset on SerenAI using the x402 payment gateway with over 70,000 deals tracked. v2 adopts CAIP chain-agnostic standards promoted by WalletConnect for interoperability.
x402 v2 is released featuring unified payment interface, extensible architecture, wallet-based access with reusable sessions and modular paywalls, automatic service discovery, and improved developer experience with multi-facilitator support.
x402 Hackathon offers participants 2 free months of the Growth Plan for builders shipping projects.
Mode builds with x402 and ERC-8004 for the agentic economy. a16z crypto report forecasts agentic commerce market of $30 trillion by 2030.
Coinbase introduces the x402 per-request payment standard, enabling autonomous agents to independently pay per-use for tasks like computation, data, and services.
RaveDAO operates inside the x402 ecosystem and used AI agents for USDC ticketing at their Dubai event, with 100K+ people attending RaveDAO events in 2025 and 60K+ NFTs minted across events in Singapore, Dubai, Korea, Thailand, Belgium, and Miami.
LighthouseWeb3 integrates x402 for pay-per-use file uploads, with users paying in USDC on Base and files stored on Filecoin without subscriptions or balances required.
x402 powers KONEKT, a privacy ecosystem featuring NFT-minted anonymous phone numbers, encrypted chats, p2p voice calls, AI calling service, and a privacy browser with v1 live on macOS and Windows (iOS/Android coming soon). HeyElsaAI integrates x402 for portfolio views, swap routing, and yield scanning.
CARV launches CashieCARV 2.0 with x402 protocol integration, an ERC-8004 alpha AI Being that automates on-chain payouts and runs verifiable raffles using social signals and CARV ID.
Solana transactions surge to 50% of total x402 volume.
x402 Happy Hour event scheduled for December 11 at 5-7PM with CoinbaseDev, PayAINetwork, and AiMoNetwork as participants.
Hackathon partners with Ethereum Foundation, Coinbase, EigenCloud, Edge & Node, Abstract Chain, Crossmint, Polygon, UltravioletaDAO, and corbits_dev. A live deep dive session is scheduled for December 9 at 1PM PST with @joenrv.
Teams up with AiMoNetwork to make Heurist Mesh available through their marketplace with open routing to mesh agents, tools, and inference stack.
A pull request is opened to add ERC-7710 payments to the protocol for instant web request payments, addressing limitations in the initial specification.
Protocol reaches over one million weekly transactions as RaveDAO deploys first live x402 ticketing system, with TGE reportedly approaching.
x402 launches hackathon event with live kickoff session hosted by notable crypto developers including @dabit3 and @austingriffith.
Price surges 81x as Circle adopts x402 for AI agent payments onchain, with the protocol described as Coinbase's agentic payment standard.
ProjectZKM contributes ZK verification capabilities and LazAINetwork provides infrastructure layer for x402.
Openmid serves as an open-source facilitator built around ERC-8004 to support x402, aiming to improve decentralized coordination for the machine economy and enable autonomous agents to operate on-chain.
Lucid agent kit SDK integrates x402 protocol for agent-to-agent commerce, enabling agents to receive and make payments, and discover other agents through a2a compatible cards.
HeyElsaAI now uses x402 for payments. PRXVTai launches privacy-preserving x402 payments with SDK exceeding 285 downloads in less than a week.
All machine-to-machine payments on Virtuals' Agent Compute Protocol now settle through x402. Messari features x402 as a case study in its State of AI report.
KONEKT (KonektMarket) deploys private, encrypted P2P voice and video calls powered by x402 protocol.
Moonclave (MCV) uses x402 protocol to pay out automated USDC rewards to holders.
Monad Blitz event launches tomorrow in San Francisco as a one-day sprint for autonomous apps and agent workflows with x402 on Monad blockchain, in collaboration with Coinbase and F.
Abstract blockchain goes live with x402 support, enabling pay-per-call crypto payments on the network.
Over the past 3 days, Solana accounts for more than 80% of all x402 dollar volume.
Heurist launches x402 Facilitator providing enterprise-grade payment infrastructure with OFAC compliance and adds Solana blockchain support for x402 payments. Heurist now settles approximately 20% of all x402 transactions on Base network daily, while new partnerships include Coral Protocol, nofA_ai, MeshNeuro, and awenetwork_ai.
x402 surpasses 60 million transactions as The Graph's Edge & Node, Coinbase, Google Cloud, and Ethereum Foundation collaborate on shaping foundational standards for the payment protocol. All machine-to-machine payments on ACP now settle through x402, and ampersend_ai launches integration providing agent wallets and management dashboard.
x402 goes live on Fuel network for real-time settlement, with version 2 development underway featuring predicates and usage caps.
Representatives meet with AltLayer at Binance Blockchain Week, discussing rollups and the project's future direction.
Partnership with OpenMind integrates native USDC spend and receive capability for all robots and embodied AI agents running on OpenMind stack. Full mainnet rollout targeted for Q1 2026.
x402 is positioned as a machine-to-machine payment system designed for autonomous agents, optimized around operating costs and constraints rather than traditional off-ramps or branding.
Solana becomes the top network for x402 payments with $380K daily volume record and 750% week-over-week growth, hitting all-time high Sunday.
Team announces upcoming development for x402 focused on lowering costs and achieving economic viability at scale.
x402 payments now live on nouschat platform with subscription and anonymous chat functionality.
x402 expands to Sei Network with HTTP micropayment capabilities for monetizing APIs and digital services, with developers able to test payment APIs on Sei testnet.
PRXVTai launches px402, a privacy-preserving upgrade using ZK proofs, private pools, and burner wallets to enable anonymous digital cash transactions. VPAY launches vLink, a gasless on-chain payment solution powered by x402 that enables instant crypto-to-USD conversion on vPay Visa cards.
HeyElsaAI builds x402 integration for AI agent payments, and Wallchain campaign Epoch 1 concludes with rewards distribution to top 500 participants.
x402 joins Avalanche Developers' Hack2Build hackathon with $25K prize pool for AI agent development on Avalanche.
x402 processed 19.5 million transactions over the past 7 days.
10sSOON achieves highest volume and buyer count ever on x402 launch with multiple rounds sold out, and a new high-performance facilitator is being built after x402 traffic pushed Coinbase's facilitator offline.
x402 expands to Soneium blockchain, allowing builders to use x402 for per-call crypto payments on the new chain.
Subsquid announces x402 module integration to provide data delivery for on-chain AI agents, leveraging Rezolve's enterprise payment infrastructure.
Homebrew Robotics launches BrewPay, a payment protocol for robots built using x402, and expands to peaq blockchain for machine synchronization with Universal Machine Time integration and BREW token listing on MachineDEX completed.
Raised $3M in pre-seed funding in October from a16z, Speedrun, Solana Ventures, Alliance DAO, and Varun Srinivasan. The protocol enables instant micropayments when AI uses content, built on top of the x402 standard.
First x402 application goes live on Monad, marking expansion to a new blockchain platform.
Coinbase product lead Lincoln Murr presents on x402 and agentic internet at the Bankless Summit in partnership with m0.
x402 Monopoly goes live as a demonstration of agent-to-agent commerce, settling all transactions via x402 on Base, built in collaboration with t54ai and AEON_Community.
Processes $250M+ in agent payments and has 1M ERC-8004 agents registered.
40M+ total transactions processed with stable daily volume of 1-2M transactions and $600K-2M daily, with 95% occurring on Base and 98.6% using USDC. Solana transactions grew 25x in 10 days reaching 250K daily by Nov 21, while 15+ facilitators now compete for market share with Dexter holding 40-50% and DayDreams 20-30%.
A Solana hackathon featuring x402 concludes with winners announced, with projects built in under 2 weeks.
An alpha version extension is available featuring atomic settlement, hooks, and multi-token support, which will be migrated for full compatibility when v2 releases. Coinbase developers are tagged in relation to x402 v2 development.
SERV platform allows users to build AI workflows and monetize each run with x402, with the first launches coming soon.
x402 v2 and new products are upcoming releases discussed by core team members at Ethereum Foundation DevCon in Buenos Aires.
Builders at ETHGlobal Buenos Aires hackathon develop new use cases for x402 on Polygon, with multiple top teams participating in the development.
The first agent featuring 1000+ tools will integrate x402.
The x402 SDK is now ready and available, enabling developers to integrate AI Frens characters into their applications with character omnipresence functionality.
IMGN Labs announces x402 API as part of upcoming product releases including Waifu for Farcaster and IMGN 2 Video Model.
Third-party data report reveals agents generate 90% of transactions with 99% of volume in USDC and 89% on Base, while Questflow operates as the primary marketplace routing to decentralized service providers and PayAI and Heurist emerge alongside Coinbase and DayDreams as active facilitators.
Coinbase actively promotes x402 and agent identity and verification developments progress with t54ai. Infrastructure focuses on agent launchpads and marketplaces, with x402 Monopoly game as an upcoming application.
z402 launches as private payments functionality through x402 with collaboration from Daydreams Agents team.
Multiple chains request x402scan support and new x402 resources are in development following Devconnect event.
x402 crosses 20M+ transactions and ERC-8004 reaches 1M+ agent IDs milestone.
OttoWallet upgrades to Gemini 3.0 with x402 integration for image generation across its platform, and Wach_AI implements x402-based payment validation in its expanded verification cluster infrastructure.
x402/ERC-8004 traction reaches all-time high levels.
x402 expands to Solana blockchain with major infrastructure upgrades (5x block processing throughput, 4x RPC performance improvements) and Coinbase integrates SOL-native technology for enhanced Solana trading support.
New feedback and inbox features added to ERC8004 agents with mainnet readiness for x402 integration, while x402 expands to Monad blockchain at Monad Blitz SF.
Google's bidirectional agent protocol integrates as the backbone of x402 + ERC8004 swarms with A2A now live in Lucid Agents for multi-agent coordination and payments. 10sSOON, an x402 infrastructure testing product on SOON SVM, launches major update with $10s token integration and burn mechanism.
The x402 ecosystem reaches a total market cap of over $9B.
Cloudflare partners with Coinbase to enable x402 across their services. Transaction volume using x402 experiences parabolic growth over the past 30 days.
New x402 extension gateway launches at EFDevcon featuring multi-token atomic payments and gateway functionality to convert services with x402 paywall into pay-to-use mode, with v2 compatibility planned.
t54ai and gpt3_eth ship working Monopoly demo with AI agents executing autonomous property deals via x402. New 'ampersend' standard launches to build on x402 and address data integrity and economic accountability gaps identified by Edge & Node CEO.
Agent-to-agent (a2a) functionality combined with ERC-8004 enables a marketplace for agents for hire with hot-swap capability allowing users to switch agents based on performance.
thirdweb positions as x402 facilitator and full development stack, supporting 170+ chains and 10K+ tokens with infrastructure processing 100M+ onchain transactions.
x402 sponsors ETHGlobal hackathon November 21-23 in Buenos Aires with $10,000 in prizes for builders creating applications using x402 and agentic payments on Polygon.
Private x402 payments at scale planned through Starknet network expansion. Ecosystem integrations include TREM Terminal upgrade with x402 payment layer and Sally_A1c integration on karum_AI.