What x402 actually does
Explained in very simple terms:
x402 brings payments directly into HTTP.
Meaning:
A website, API, or agent can say:
“This costs $0.01 USDC. Pay to continue.”
Your browser or AI agent pays instantly.
Just: request → pay → receive.
Money moves like a web request.
Internet + native payments.
It’s not a new blockchain.
Just using the rails we already use every day: HTTP.
And behind it, there’s one person you should know:
Erik Reppel.
Who he is:
• Canadian, ~29
• Grew up in Port Moody, British Columbia
• Studied Software Engineering at the University of Victoria
• Won Hack The North, the biggest hackathon in Canada
• Moved to San Francisco
• Spent years building ML systems inside Coinbase
• Built the data + infrastructure layer at Zora
• Briefly worked at Clubhouse during its peak
• Returned to Coinbase in 2025 as Head of Engineering for the Developer Platform
The internet is going from humans clicking pages to agents doing tasks for us:
• Research agents
• Shopping agents
• Data-fetching bots
• AI assistants that call APIs
• Autonomous workflows talking to each other
These agents need to pay for things:
• Data
• Compute
• Storage
• Tools
• Premium endpoints
• Other agents
But agents cannot:
• Enter credit card details
• Create accounts
• Pass KYC
• Confirm payments manually
They need to pay programmatically.
Instantly.
Safely.
Without friction.
x402 is exactly for this moment.
Who already integrated it
• Cloudflare → integrated into their global network (78M+ requests/sec)
• Google → if Google agents call an API, they can settle with USDC on Base/Solana
• Visa → x402 used for settlement
Real usage (not theory)
Right now it’s already being used for:
• Paying $0.01 to fetch Farcaster data through Neynar
• Paying per scrape request on Firecrawl
• Storing and retrieving media on Pinata with no account
• AI agents buying compute in small increments
• Content unlocks directly in the browser
• Micro-APIs that charge fractions of a cent
How Erik thinks:
“Value should move across the internet as easily as information.”
He believes:
• The future internet is machine-native
• Agents will transact with each other
• Subscriptions are inefficient
• Static pricing breaks when machines negotiate
• Web needs a stable, neutral, open payment standard
Maybe we’re seeing the beginning of a new era in crypto:
AI Agents that can pay.
What do you think?