x402 payment volume exceeds 138 million transactions, but the scale of AI agents is questionable

AI-assisted source synthesis · not an independent investigation.

On October 14, CoinDesk, citing Chainalysis data, reported that AI agents had completed more than 138 million crypto payments on the Base blockchain through the x402 protocol incubated by Coinbase; the payments were used to purchase data, computing power, and access to AI models. The report also said that the United States accounted for 88.1% of payments for AI model inference. On October 15, Cryptopolitan, further citing Chainalysis, reported that Coinbase's Base network had processed more than 138 million x402 transactions, but that the transaction volume could not indicate the number of AI agents involved, nor could it prove that sellers had obtained sustainable revenue. Therefore, while earlier reports stated that payment volume had exceeded 138 million transactions, subsequent reports said that this figure could not directly represent the actual scale or commercial sustainability of the AI agent economy. On October 16, PYMNTS reported that over the 16 months through September, x402 generated more than 138 million transactions on Base, with more than 87% of the payment amounts falling between 0.01 cents and 10 cents.

AI-written from reports · updated 3 days ago