jakiro
Author: Haotian; Source: X, @tmel0211
I’ve been reading the discussions on the x402 track these days.I found that most people use the logic of traditional payment to define x402, such as passively waiting for Cloudflare’s promotion rhythm, struggling with whether Google support is reliable, and so on.Looking at it this way is completely wrong, because when Pay meets Crypto, the story may be rewritten.:
1) The iron law that traditional payment channels are king on the seller side will not change., API sellers, that is, payment recipients, do need CDN infrastructure giants like Cloudflare to promote.It will use the x402 payment gateway that can be easily opened with one click through a top-down channel network to connect seller groups to x402 on a large scale.;
But we can’t passively wait for Cloudflare.Crypto is the first step to rewrite the Pay story, using tokens to incentivize sellers.
There are many ways: for example, the Facilitator competition has started, awarding tokens to API providers that access x402; another example is that some API agent aggregator platforms will package traditional APIs as x402 compatible, earn arbitrage space, and drive traditional sellers to authorize access;
2) The buyer side should theoretically be a group of Agents with payment needs, but the problem now is that most agents do not have practical payment requirements, or they are chatbots that call API for free.What to do?
Crypto rewrites its story for the second time, using Launchpad to issue tokens in bulk to fill the buyer gap.
When a large number of Agents with payment functions are generated in batches, coins are issued during the payment process, or there is an opportunity to make payment requests, naturally there will be a large number of “buyer” demands.Even if there is a bubble, at least the infrastructure upstream and downstream of the entire payment channel will definitely accelerate prosperity in the process..
3) The logic of Facilitator competition is the same. If we only compete for payment channel coverage, the natural result will be infinitely close to free, then the commercialization ceiling of Facilitator will naturally be zero.But don’t forget that Facilitator, as a key node that facilitates payment behavior, can upgrade the “free pipeline” into a “traffic entrance” through token empowerment..
Facilitator is ultimately the business logic of aggregation route distribution. Token cashback, token incentives, priority settlement, route recommendation, etc. may become its new business model.;
4) In the traditional payment system, Visa MasterCard is just the infrastructure for collecting tolls. The most important thing is that the situation is basically monopolized. However, in the x402 track, every x402 transaction will be directly converted into ecological gain indicators such as on-chain TVL growth and gas fee income.Therefore, it is bound to bring about a wave of multi-chain infrastructure and token competition around x402..
Although Base does have a unique advantage, x402 as an open protocol will become a high ground for many chains to compete for. For example, Base’s creator economy can rely on x402 to quickly create popular products. Solana’s x402 hackathon must be to rekindle the second wave of AI Agent. Monad is a high-concurrency performance chain. Will GameFi+x402 become their main application scenario?
above.
Let me express my attitude first. I don’t like Crypto’s bubble stories of “asset issuance” that are always staged one after another..
But compared with traditional payment, the linear path of laying out the infrastructure first and then waiting for the application to be slowly launched.Crypto will definitely use the flywheel model of first creating false prosperity for tokens, and then using the prosperity to drive real applications..
Do you understand?
When Pay meets Crypto, not only the payment method is rewritten, but the entire cold start logic is rewritten..
