Blockchain-based AI payments are showing signs of staying power, with more users increasingly topping up wallets used for agentic transactions, a sign of repeat usage, according to a report published Wednesday by Chainalysis, a blockchain investigative and analytics firm.
“Each successive group of wallets has arrived more committed than the last,” the firm wrote.
The findings suggest recurring demand for agentic commerce, in which AI-equipped software buys services autonomously. The x402 protocol, developed by cryptocurrency exchange operator Coinbase, enables payments small enough to make conventional card processing impractical.
Returning to spend
Among wallets first funded in the second quarter of 2026, 89.3% received additional funding within 30 days, up from 70.6% for the third-quarter 2025 group.
The calculation included only wallets sending payments on at least two separate days, excluding one-off experimenters.
Wallets are making their first x402 payment sooner after receiving funds: The median interval fell from 73 days in late 2025 to 18 minutes in the third quarter of 2026.
Still experimental
Experts interviewed described agentic commerce as remaining in its “experimentation phase.” More than 87% of payments in the 16 months through September were between a hundredth of a cent and 10 cents.
The tiny payments echo findings covered by DeAI News on Sept. 23, when developer and researcher Zaryab Afser reported for Decipher Club that the median x402 catalog price was 1 cent and the median merchant earned just 6 cents over 30 days.
The DeAI angle: Repeat payments suggest a potential market for independent providers selling data, code review and model inference, the computation used to generate AI responses. Blockchain payments could help these providers charge agents directly. Tiny payments and the restricted sample leave broader commercial scale uncertain.
HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: The first draft was generated on ChatGPT using a custom skill designed to write stories based on reports. I then used the Distro Publisher MCP connector to file the draft directly to DeAI News on the DistroVerse web app. I edited the piece using the built-in DistroVerse story editor.