Cryptoupdated 1h ago2 min read
Chainalysis Finds AI Agents Made 138 Million x402 Payments on Coinbase Base
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AI agents conducted more than 138 million transactions on Coinbase's Base via x402. US-linked wallets accounted for about 88% of identified AI inference payments; China 0.1%.
7 outlets told this the same way.
x402 payments surge
Chainalysis found that AI agents made more than 138 million transactions through the x402 protocol on Coinbase’s Base blockchain, as U.S.-linked wallets accounted for 88.1% of identified payments for AI model inference. Eric Jardine, Chainalysis’ head of research, told CoinDesk, "One possible explanation is that Chinese developers are more inclined to use open-weight models such as DeepSeek and Qwen, reducing their need to purchase metered inference services," as the report contrasted U.S. and China-linked shares. Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare’s chief strategy officer, told CoinDesk that "Stablecoins are particularly well suited to the kinds of transactions we expect AI agents to make at first," tying the micropayment pattern to stablecoins’ ability to handle fractions of a cent.
Chainalysis reported that more than 87% of analyzed x402 payments were worth between one-hundredth of a cent and 10 cents, and the protocol’s activity in July totaled roughly 75 million payments worth just $24 million over 30 days. Cumulative transactions through x402 rose from about 1,500 in mid-2025 to more than 138 million by the third quarter of 2026, framing the growth as agentic commerce maturing on Base.
Who pays, and how
The findings were released Wednesday alongside backing for x402 from Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and other payments giants, while Coinbase began allowing business customers to accept payments from AI agents. Agentic commerce described developers giving an AI bot an allowance, with the bot paying for services as it works without asking a person to approve each purchase. Chainalysis data showed that the median time between a wallet receiving its first deposit and making its first payment fell from 73 days in late 2025 to 18 minutes by the third quarter of 2026, and roughly two-thirds of new wallets now spend within an hour of receiving funds.
Around 90% of qualifying active wallets received another deposit within 30 days, up from roughly 71% a year earlier, suggesting developers were funding ongoing tasks rather than one-off experiments. The analysis excluded wallets that made payments on one only one day, and it cautioned that transaction counts alone do not establish how much represents genuine commercial demand.
Standards, noise, and stakes
Chainalysis and other trackers put x402 agent payments past 200 million transactions this year, while wash trading and self-dealing could distort adjusted volume. Adjusted x402 volume comes to roughly $19 million, not the hundreds of millions implied by the raw transaction count. The x402 Foundation launched operationally under the Linux Foundation on July 14, 2026, and the foundation now counts roughly 40 members including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Shopify, Cloudflare, Circle, and Polygon Labs.
The x402 protocol was incubated by Coinbase and enabled AI agents to pay for digital services using cryptocurrency, with more than 87% of analyzed x402 payments worth between one-hundredth of a cent and 10 cents. "AI agents are becoming economic actors where every agent is effectively a new 'user' of the blockchain," as the report framed the transactions as small for now but indicative of autonomous software establishing spending habits.