An online payments protocol introduced by Coinbase in May that enables AI agents to transact in stablecoins over the internet has seen more than a 10,000% increase in transaction activity over a last month.
At the time, Coinbase said x402 fixes “the internet’s first mistake” 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 lets AI — and humans — pay directly while using a website or app: they request something, receive a HTTP 402 “Payment Required” prompt, and then send a signed stablecoin payment, which x402 then verifies automatically. No credit cards required.
There were nearly 500,000 x402 transactions between Oct. 14 and 20, marking a 10,780% rise in comparison to levels seen four weeks earlier, according to Dune Analytics data.
Transaction activity went even higher on Friday, with other Dune Analytics data showing a record 239,505 transactions were made, while on Thursday, a record $332,000 in transaction volume was posted.
It comes as tech-focused venture capital firm a16z’s crypto arm mentioned agentic AI in its 2025 State of Crypto report earlier this week — where it anticipated that autonomous transactions could reach $30 trillion by 2030.
Without the need for human intervention in managing API calls, storage, and computation, agentic AIs could enable everything from self-driving taxis covering their own costs with stablecoins to apps automatically using stablecoins to store data permanently, Coinbase development team members Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr said in August.
In a limited manner, AI agents are already trading crypto by analyzing market data, executing buy or sell orders, and optimizing portfolios in real time without human intervention.
CoinGecko lists x402 tokens as a new category
Developers are now leveraging x402’s design to launch tokens directly — fueling a wave of x402-powered memecoin launches, KuCoin Ventures noted on X.
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The rise prompted CoinGecko to track x402 tokens as a new ecosystem, which has boomed into a near $180 million market, up 266% over the last 24 hours.
Ethereum is the best fit for HTTP 402
Leffew and Murr said Ethereum’s trustless settlement layer makes it the ideal blockchain for HTTP 402 implementation, noting that it makes invoices and dispute chargebacks far more efficient than traditional processes.
“They need atomic payments, programmable policies, and composable wallets. Ethereum and stablecoins give them exactly that.”
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