Chainalysis: AI agents made 138 million x402 payments on Base in a year
- —138 million x402 transactions on Base in Q3 2026 vs 58,800 a year earlier
- —Over 87% of payments ranged from $0.0001 to $0.10, mostly $0.01–0.10 in USDC
- —Median time from funding an agent wallet to first spend fell from 73 days to 18 minutes
- —US wallets made 88.1% of inference payments; China made 90% of code-audit payments
Why it matters: Stablecoin micropayments are becoming the settlement layer for the agent economy, where card networks are economically unviable.
Source: Journal du Coin