Who will be the biggest winner in the x402 trillion track?

Original Title: Who will accrue the most value in the x402 race?

Original Author: Yash, Founder of SendAI 

Original Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

x402 is having its moment in the spotlight, with a16z calling it a 30 trillion USD market.

As someone who has been following x402 since its early release, I started to think: if this market is truly so massive, who will be the biggest winner?

This article will not explain what x402 is, but will analyze its value accrual and adoption from a practical perspective.

The core value of x402 is to make every API call a payment transaction. Simply put, any button click can become a micropayment.

x402 is not a technological innovation; it can be fully realized through blockchain transactions. All the limitations of blockchain transactions, such as gas fees and wallets, also apply to x402.

But as a payment standard, it is extremely powerful because it is compatible with the HTTPS protocol, allowing the entire internet to support payment functionality.

Like all payment systems, x402 has four main stakeholders:

· API sellers (supply side)

· API buyers (demand side)

· Intermediaries

· Underlying chains and tokens

1. Sellers (Supply Side)

Mainly divided into two categories:

· First-party / second-party sellers (e.g., @switchboardxyz selling their own pricing data)

· Third-party sellers (e.g., selling @heliuslabs' RPC services via proxy API)

For the first type of sellers, once demand is large enough, they have every reason to support x402, as it helps them open up new markets.

For example, The New York Times could enable x402 on its website, requiring crawler bots to pay for access, thereby opening up new revenue streams.

Or, after platforms like Airbnb support x402, AI agents like @perplexity_ai can pay directly with USDC and automatically receive commissions in the same transaction.

The second type of sellers often become "API marketplaces," integrating various APIs to provide users with convenient payment methods. Their profit model is arbitrage, such as charging a fixed monthly fee of $20, then $0.0001 per call.

In the short term, intermediaries are incentivized to build API marketplaces to solve the cold start problem (e.g., @corbits_dev).

For sellers, the immediate opportunity is to upgrade existing APIs or websites to support x402, gaining additional revenue and traffic from network effects.

2. Buyers (Demand Side)

API consumers, especially "AI agents." Any user or agent with a wallet can pay API fees via x402.

This is the hardest part of the chain to kickstart. It can be said that the current real demand is almost zero (most are junk transactions).

There are two ways to stimulate demand:

· Sellers exclusively provide data through x402 (e.g., news sites only allow paid crawling via x402)

· Provide enough APIs supporting x402 so that agents and applications can easily use them

I believe the key driver may be @Cloudflare (a member of the x402 Foundation, especially focused on pay-per-crawl). As the world's largest edge network/CDN provider, Cloudflare deeply controls the distribution of network traffic (including APIs, content, and services).

They only need to add a switch to enable x402 for specific content, allowing developers to earn extra income. (I guess initially it will be Coinbase/Base exclusive, supporting NET USD payments.)

I even envisioned the interface design for Cloudflare to implement this feature.

Agent commerce (such as ChatGPT, Shopify, etc.) will become the biggest demand driver for x402.

Important note: Many people mistakenly believe that x402 allows payments without a wallet, but x402 is not magic. It still fundamentally requires a wallet and blockchain transactions (including gas fees), though these are abstracted or can be batch processed off-chain via API credits.

3. Intermediaries

Just like Visa and Mastercard, they route payments between API buyers and sellers. They usually charge 0-25 basis points (currently most are free), but this is destined to be a price war because the barrier to entry for intermediaries is very low.

Although Visa/Mastercard have deep moats, x402 intermediaries have almost no moat, because the real network effects are accumulated on the underlying blockchain. Large companies like Cloudflare or Google can easily launch their own intermediaries on chains like Solana or Base in a day, since they control the user interface.

And giants like Coinbase, to promote the ecosystem, may even open source and provide intermediary services for free, further squeezing profit margins.

The main x402 intermediaries currently include: @CoinbaseDev, @x402rs, and @PayAINetwork.

4. Public Chains and Tokens

As a key project of @coinbase, @base (and USDC) is naturally the main chain. But other public chains like @SolanaFndn (which held an x402 hackathon) are also promoting it vigorously.

All stablecoins and public chains will strive to dominate x402, as this can directly increase on-chain TVL (by increasing stablecoin lock-up and transaction volume).

It will be interesting to see how stablecoin chains like @tempo and @arc integrate x402 into enterprise development toolkits.

In my view, public chains, tokens, and wallets will capture the most value in the x402 ecosystem.

There is a reason why Coinbase and @brian_armstrong are so aggressively promoting x402: Coinbase controls the entire tech stack:

· Intermediary (CDP)

· Public chain (Base)

· Stablecoin (USDC)

· Wallet (Base app and Coinbase embedded wallet)

They can directly provide end-to-end solutions to enterprise clients (such as Cloudflare, Vercel) while keeping the core protocol open source.

Base is currently far ahead, but everything is just beginning.

Large companies like Stripe are likely to launch their own x402-like protocols or run x402 payments on their own chains (such as @tempo). In addition, large-scale micropayments are currently not economical on chains like @solana or @base.

For example, on Solana, due to base fees + priority fees, any payment below $0.1 is not cost-effective, as payment transactions have to compete for resources with speculative transactions (like Memecoin swaps). I appreciate Tempo's design, which provides a dedicated channel for payment transactions.

It is foreseeable that as x402 becomes more widespread, there will definitely be sidechains/application chains/rollup solutions dedicated to handling x402 payments.

Value Capture by Interfaces and Wallets

It goes without saying that whoever controls the traffic entry and user interface will capture the most value, whether it's platforms/marketplaces, AI chat apps, AI browsers, etc.

In the internet sector, browsers occupy the most user attention and are naturally suited to integrate x402 and control the wallet layer.

Imagine Chrome with a built-in native wallet, where every click could trigger an x402 payment. Any API can complete payment directly when needed, as long as it passes a secure whitelist review.

Browser providers can easily charge a 0.05% transaction fee, and users are willing to pay for convenience.

However, x402's biggest competitor is Stripe!

For example, the largest consumer AI application, ChatGPT, announced the implementation of commerce features via @Stripe. Stripe has its own agent commerce protocol (ACP), processing payments on existing card networks through shared payment tokens.

x402 and Dynamic Resource Pricing

x402 excels at handling fixed pricing (e.g., "$0.001 per API call"), but this does not fully leverage the true potential of blockchains: creating markets for everything.

I believe the unique aspect of x402 is enabling "resource markets." These resources can be:

· Data or results (such as prices, news)

· Computing power or inference for specific operations (e.g., booking a flight)

· Complex workflows (e.g., custom chair manufacturing)

· Priority services (e.g., time slot or bandwidth reservation)

Historically, market mechanisms have solved information coordination problems, with prices naturally reflecting supply and demand.

Now imagine a future where you tell an AI agent, "Custom-make a chair for me to these specs for $500."

This agent will autonomously coordinate multiple resources: sourcing wood, hiring carpenters, arranging delivery—all fully automated, completely solving the resource coordination problem.

Thanks to large language models and AI agents, for the first time we have machines capable of reasoning and negotiating across the entire supply chain. This will drive hyper-financialization, with markets forming dynamically and every resource and action being priced in real time, while AI agents seamlessly transact and pay behind the scenes.

Although x402 itself does not support dynamic pricing, blockchains like Solana can, through permissionless market creation mechanisms.

Imagine every Airbnb host having a dynamic market, where prices are no longer set by the host but are entirely determined by market demand. This is the world we are moving towards.

Prospects for x402

I look forward to x402 and the infinite possibilities it brings.

But it is indeed overhyped; if you want to invest in x402 tokens, 99% are vaporware.

Although I am not optimistic in the short term, I am extremely bullish in the long run: x402 will inevitably become the foundational technology for the agent-based internet and deeply integrate into crypto networks.

x402 reminds me of Solana Blinks, which turned every click into a Solana transaction request, but Blinks did not take off at the time.

But this time is different, with a giant like @coinbase leading the way. If successful, we will forever change the way payments work on the internet!

Summary

Whoever controls the traffic entry and user interface (as well as assets/public chains) will capture the most value in the x402 ecosystem. This is why Coinbase is going all in—it controls the end-to-end full tech stack.

The SendAI team (especially @_0xaryan) has been closely following x402 developments since May 2025, and has actively contributed to the x402-mcp project in collaboration with @vercel (adding @solana support for specific use cases).

In the future, we will integrate the complete x402 tech stack into broader infrastructure and applications.