Coinbase executive Lincoln Murr says AI agents are beginning to buy tools and content directly over x402, though recent settlement research suggests independently verifiable usage remains limited.
The x402 ecosystem is moving from protocol design toward early real-world agent payments, with Coinbase's Lincoln Murr describing how an AI agent completed a Kindle delivery task by selecting services, paying them in small increments, and finishing the work without user approval at each step. Murr said the pattern points to a model in which agents can discover and purchase capabilities during a task rather than relying on pre-funded accounts, API keys or subscriptions. The open standard, originally created by Coinbase and moved to the Linux Foundation under the x402 Foundation, is backed by organizations including AWS, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Shopify, Google, Microsoft and Cloudflare. Coinbase's Bazaar now indexes more than 10,000 paid tools for agent use, while AWS and Cloudflare have each added infrastructure that allows websites and services to quote machine-readable prices, verify payment, and grant access to bots or agents. Murr argued this could shift the internet from an attention-driven model toward utility-based, per-request payments. He said wallets can function as both identifier and payment method for agents, allowing software to compare providers on price, quality and response time and buy only what it needs. He also said microtransactions may become an entry point that later develops into larger vendor relationships, discounts and bulk pricing. Adoption, however, appears to be at an early stage. x402 processed roughly 75 million payments worth $24 million over a recent 30-day period, averaging about $0.32 each, but a July population-scale study found that a large share of on-chain settlement activity was either fictitious or took place within linked internal clusters. The study verified only $187,861 in payments to identifiable independent services, while another $20.07 million may have been genuine but could not be confirmed as independent. Murr said Coinbase wants to supply the accounts, settlement rails and discovery layer for what he called an emerging agentic economy, with agentic trading as a key test case. Coinbase is building a product to let agents trade and pay directly from a retail account, and Murr said better budget-aware decisions about when to buy premium data or services could become a competitive edge if agents reliably learn which extra payment improves outcomes.