jakiro
The most important thing about x402 is to promote the development of AI agent economy.This time x402 v2 is here, and it’s a step further.
Before x402, every time an AI agent asked a question, calculated a picture, or crawled a web page, it might have cost $0.001 or less.At this point, if you pay with a traditional credit card or Stripe, the fee starts at $0.30.
In other words, although traditional Internet payment is developed, it is not suitable for the micro-payment scenario of AI agent.The $0.001 per API call is not eligible for payment by credit card or Stripe.Because the handling fee (about 2-3% + $0.30) is much higher than the payment amount.
Moreover, AI agents are not human beings and cannot open a bank account, recharge gas, enter passwords, click confirm, etc. These are all big troubles for AI agents.This is when x402 comes in handy.It turns “HTTP 402 Payment Request”, a webpage error code that no one originally used, into an “AI Agent Alipay”.
The process is also simple: AI knocks on the door: “Boss, give me some data!” → The server says: “Okay, scan the code and pay 0.001 knives.” (returns a 402 code directly, which clearly states how much to pay, to whom, and which chain to use) → The AI agent transfers the USDC (it takes less than 1 second, and the handling fee is less than 0.0001 knives) → The server sees the money arriving and sends it to it immediately.
In this process, no one cares about the wallet, does not need to charge gas, does not need to register an account, and does not need an API key. The AI agent completes the transaction by itself.This is supported by x402 V1.
However, V1 still has some minor obstacles:
By default, you play on the Base chain, and you need to manually configure the application to support multi-chain facilitators; there is a “relay” in the middle to help you pay for gas, and the relay pays the money yourself, and it will definitely stop after a long time; each transaction must be confirmed in cash, and it will get stuck if it is used too many times; although the wallet and Gas are simplified, they are still a bit troublesome when used frequently.
V2 mainly solves the above problems:
You can use whichever chain you want, including Base, Solana, Polygon, etc. (default for multiple chains); you can “use first and end later”, for example, 100 small-amount calls can be saved together and paid again (delayed/batch); you can even connect to traditional payments such as bank cards and ACH, and you can spend fiat currency if you want (supported by existing channels); in addition, various tricks such as automatic price discovery, automatic selection of the cheapest, subscription system, and pre-recharge have been added (workflow optimization).
To sum up,
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x402 v1 allows AI agents to realize the “ability to spend their own money” (they can pay themselves, but they have to pay one by one);
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x402 v2 directly sends a “black card + password-free payment” to AI, making it much more convenient to buy.
Therefore, everyone said that x402 v2 will bring more and more prosperity to the AI economy.Thousands of AI agents take orders by themselves, buy their own computing power, buy their own data, and pay their own wages… all in one place.
