Beyond Payments: How the x 402 Protocol Becomes the "Invisible Foundation" of the AI Economy?

Author: Haotian

Toly reposted this post, and the discussion about x 402 has already become popular in overseas communities. However, I believe that focusing excessively on what exactly x 402 technology is, its features, and flaws does not allow it to unleash its full “potential.” Fortunately, someone has begun to evangelize from the grand perspective of AI + Crypto transforming traditional internet payments!

Let me highlight the main points of the “evangelism” in the Chinese Simplified community:

The original sin of the traditional internet: the advertising model. When Visa and Mastercard hold dominant terminal channels and fee structures, and payments inherently face border segmentation, with cross-border transfers taking days and costing a lot.

This leads to the internet only being able to choose the “free content + advertising monetization” path because the micro-payment economic model simply doesn’t work;

But the emergence of AI Agent has completely overturned this logic:

Think about it—when content consumers shift from “people” to “AI Agents,” the traditional internet’s attention economy-based business model is doomed to fail because you can’t sell products to an algorithm.

To adapt to the new payment infrastructure for Agents, it must meet features like high-frequency API calls, automated trading, and cross-platform data scraping, which naturally requires a more “instant, micro, borderless” payment system.

This is also the real reason behind Paypal launching @GoKiteAI, Stripe deploying @tempo, and Tether presenting @Plasma and @stable as a dual sword—indicating that the entire payment system is about to surge and undergo a revolutionary change!

This is the narrative foundation of the killer scenario of x 402 + blockchain:

Blockchain, especially @solana, has achieved ultra-low cost fees and high TPS, enabling every API call and data access to be precisely priced and settled in milliseconds;

Combined with the x 402 protocol, it establishes a seamless full process of “AI sends request —> Facilitator processes payment —> Content delivery.”

In this way, the infrastructure built by Crypto has become an essential need in the internet world, and x 402 has become the key protocol connecting the internet and Crypto. Mom no longer needs to think my involvement in AI + Crypto is unworthy.

Therefore, x 402 is not just a payment protocol; it is the cornerstone of the internet economy model in the AI era and the first puzzle piece to truly integrate Crypto and AI.