Base hits 138.5 million x402 AI agent payments

The x402 protocol, developed by Coinbase, attaches payment terms to protected digital resources using the web's "402 Payment Required" code, letting an AI agent sign a cryptographic payment authorization and pay to receive the resource. Chainalysis's Oct. 14 report shows how far that has gone: 138.5 million payments on Base, against 58,800 total transactions as of Q3 2025.

The economics are unusual. Over 87% of x402 transactions were between $0.0001 and $0.10, amounts too small for Visa and Mastercard to process profitably given fees and chargeback risk, but feasible on blockchains with fractions-of-a-cent fees. Base, Coinbase's Ethereum Layer-2, leads in cumulative settled transactions and volume, yet has no token to invest in; Solana ranks second and has overtaken Base in daily activity at several points this year.

The caveat is scale of value. TRM Labs tallied 198.9 million x402 settlements since March 2025 totaling $52.7 million across Base, Solana, and Polygon, and after removing suspicious activity about $25.6 million looked plausible; a separate 35-day sample found 90.8% of transactions worth less than $0.01. Solana's supporting infrastructure includes batch settlement through PayAI Network and BlockRunAI, which BlockRunAI says saves more than $20,000 a month in fees, and a stablecoin supply that hit a record $17.3 billion in September.