The x402 protocol, an open standard that lets AI agents pay for web services in crypto, has become popular among developers building the early generation of apps for agentic commerce.

But Shoal Research founder Gabe Tramble writes in a new post that x402 might occupy another, less-discussed role: helping people and their AI assistants find the apps in the first place.

The dynamic could play out much the way humans learned to type what they wanted into search engines in the early days of the internet. This time around, AI agents would scour marketplaces and bazaars that list x402-enabled sites and apps, whenever they're on the hunt for data, content or services, Tramble argues.

"With search, the click was the start of a funnel," Tramble wrote Friday. "With x402, the moment the agent discovers a service can also be the moment it pays. The discovery and the conversion are the same event."

  • Revenue is still thin for x402 transactions. Services atop the x402 leaderboard often clear low thousands of dollars a month, even as the network logs millions of transactions. But the time to move is now, according to Tramble: "The teams that wait for the revenue to become obvious may find that the discovery layer has already been captured."

  • Coinbase and AWS switched on agent payments at the edge in June, covering what AWS calls roughly a quarter of the internet. "A hyperscaler wiring on-chain settlement into its content-delivery edge is the clearest signal yet that agent-paid access is becoming default infrastructure," Tramble wrote.

Shoal Research has emerged as a top producer of analysis on x402 payments. The team reported this month that USDC settles 99% of x402 payments, as DeAI News covered.

Coinbase, the crypto exchange, incubated the x402 protocol but in April turned it over to the Linux Foundation, a support organization for open-source software, to be managed as a public standard.

Tramble has a Coinbase pedigree, having previously worked in crypto intelligence at the exchange, according to his LinkedIn profile.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Distro Media, the parent company of DeAI News, has integrated the x402 protocol into our Distro Reader MCP connector, allowing users to purchase premium articles directly from Claude, ChatGPT or via their AI agents.

HOW AI WAS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF THIS PIECE: I wrote the first draft of this story on Claude Desktop using a custom skill designed to generate news stories based on blog posts. I then used our Distro Publisher MCP connector to file a draft directly to DistroVerse, our web app. I used the app's built-in (non-AI) word processor to edit the piece, and I checked the facts prior to publication.