The online payment protocol launched by Coinbase in May, which allows AI agents to transact stablecoins over the Internet, has seen a more than 10,000% boost in transaction activity over the past month.
At the time, Coinbase said x402 was fixing the “first bug of the Internet” by resurrecting the Internet Communication Protocol’s Hypertext Transfer Protocol 402 – or HTTP 402 – to create a seamless payment system native to the Internet.
It allows AI – and humans – to pay directly when they operate a website or app: they request something, receive an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” prompt, and then send a signed payment in stablecoin format, which x402 then validates automatically. No credit cards required.
According to Dune Analytics, there were almost 500,000 x402 transactions between October 14 and October 20, an boost of 10,780% from levels seen four weeks earlier data.
Trading activity increased even more across other Dune Analytics properties on Friday data showing a record 239,505 transactions, while a record transaction volume of $332,000 was booked on Thursday.
This comes as tech-focused cryptocurrency venture capital firm a16z mentioned agent-based AI in its 2025 State of Crypto report earlier this week – in which it predicted that autonomous transactions could reach $30 trillion by 2030.
Without the need for human intervention to manage API calls, storage and computation, agent-based AI could enable everything from autonomous taxis that cover their own costs with stablecoins to apps that automatically operate stablecoins for persistent data storage, Coinbase development team members Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr said in August.
In a restricted way, AI agents already trade cryptocurrencies by analyzing market data, executing buy or sell orders, and optimizing portfolios in real time without human intervention.
CoinGecko lists x402 tokens as a fresh category
Developers Now Utilizing the x402 Design to Direct Token Launches, Powering a Wave of x402-Powered Memecoin Launches, KuCoin Ventures excellent on X
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This growth prompted CoinGecko to do so path x402 tokens as a fresh ecosystem that has grown into a market worth almost $180 million, up 266% in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum is best suited to HTTP 402
Leffew and Murr said Ethereum’s trustless settlement layer makes it the ideal blockchain to implement HTTP 402, noting that it makes invoices and dispute chargebacks much more competent than established processes.
“They need atomic payments, programmable policies and composable wallets. Ethereum and stablecoins give them exactly that.”
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