Overview
- The Linux Foundation on Tuesday launched the x402 Foundation after Coinbase transferred the open x402 protocol into formal governance with 40 member organizations.
- x402 repurposes the web’s reserved HTTP 402 response so a server can return a price and a client can attach a signed stablecoin payment, usually USDC, to receive data without accounts or prior contracts.
- The protocol reports about 75 million transactions in the last 30 days that moved roughly $24 million, which works out to an average payment near $0.32 and involves about 94,000 buyers and 22,000 sellers.
- Seventeen premier members include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, Adyen, Google, AWS, Cloudflare, Ripple and Shopify, and Google and Cloudflare have already added x402 support to their agent tooling.
- Despite corporate backing, x402’s dollar volume is small next to legacy card networks and on‑chain DEX‑style metrics have been volatile, yet the standard could change how autonomous AI agents buy data and services and drive new micro‑pricing models online.