IOSG | Stripe for Agents: Agent Investment Map from Protocol Stack to Payment Ecosystem
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IOSG | Stripe for Agents: Agent Investment Map from Protocol Stack to Payment Ecosystem
Web3's role is not to replace traditional payments, but to provide the foundational capabilities of verifiable identity, programmable settlement, and global stablecoins for the Agent era.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Jacob Zhao @IOSG
Agentic Commerce refers to a full-cycle commercial system where AI agents autonomously complete service discovery, credibility assessment, order generation, payment authorization, and final settlement. It no longer relies on human step-by-step operations or information input; instead, agents automatically collaborate, place orders, pay, and fulfill across platforms and systems, forming a closed-loop of machine-to-machine (M2M) commerce.
In the crypto space, the most practically valuable applications currently center around stablecoin payments and DeFi. Therefore, in the convergence of Crypto and AI, the two most valuable paths are: AgentFi, which leverages existing mature DeFi protocols in the short term, and Agent Payment, which focuses on stablecoin settlements in the medium to long term and gradually matures through protocols like ACP/AP2/x402/ERC-8004.
Agentic Commerce is currently limited in scalability due to protocol maturity, regulatory differences, and merchant/user adoption. However, in the long run, payment is the foundational anchor of all commercial loops, making Agentic Commerce highly valuable over time.
Payment Systems and Application Scenarios for Agentic Commerce
In the Agentic Commerce ecosystem, real-world merchant networks represent the largest value opportunity. Regardless of how AI Agents evolve, traditional fiat payment systems (Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, bank transfers) and the rapidly growing stablecoin systems (USDC, x402) will coexist long-term, jointly forming the foundation of Agentic Commerce.
Figure: Comparison between traditional fiat payments and stablecoin payments
Real-world merchants—from e-commerce, subscriptions, SaaS, to travel, content monetization, and enterprise procurement—support trillion-dollar demands and are the core source of value for AI Agents to automatically compare prices, renew subscriptions, and make purchases. In the short term, mainstream consumer and enterprise procurement will continue to be dominated by traditional fiat payment systems.
The primary barrier preventing stablecoins from scaling in real-world commerce is not technical but rather regulatory (KYC/AML, taxation, consumer protection), merchant accounting (stablecoins are not legal tender), and the lack of dispute resolution mechanisms due to irreversible payments. Due to these structural limitations, stablecoins are unlikely to enter highly regulated industries such as healthcare, aviation, e-commerce, government, and utilities in the near term. Instead, their adoption will focus on digital content, cross-border payments, Web3-native services, and machine economies (M2M/IoT/Agent)—areas with lower regulatory pressure or native on-chain alignment. This represents precisely the window of opportunity for Web3-native Agentic Commerce to achieve early scale breakthroughs.
However, regulatory institutionalization is advancing rapidly in 2025: bipartisan consensus has been reached on the U.S. Stablecoin Bill, Hong Kong and Singapore have implemented stablecoin licensing frameworks, the EU's MiCA regulation has officially taken effect, Stripe now supports USDC, and PayPal has launched PYUSD. As regulatory structures become clearer, stablecoins are being accepted into mainstream financial systems, opening policy space for future cross-border settlements, B2B procurement, and machine economies.
Best-fit application scenarios for Agentic Commerce
The core of Agentic Commerce is not about replacing one payment rail with another, but rather transferring the execution authority of "ordering → authorization → payment" to AI Agents, allowing both traditional fiat systems (AP2, credential-based authorization, identity compliance) and stablecoin systems (x402, CCTP, smart contract settlements) to play to their strengths. It is neither a zero-sum competition between fiat and stablecoins nor a narrative of single-rail replacement, but a structural opportunity that expands the capabilities of both: fiat payments continue to support human-centric commerce, while stablecoin payments accelerate machine-native and on-chain-native scenarios. Together, they complement each other as dual engines of the agent economy.
Overview of Underlying Protocol Standards for Agentic Commerce
The protocol stack of Agentic Commerce consists of six layers, forming a complete machine commerce pipeline from "capability discovery" to "payment delivery." A2A Catalog and MCP Registry handle capability discovery, ERC-8004 provides on-chain verifiable identity and reputation; ACP and AP2 manage structured ordering and authorization instructions respectively; the payment layer runs parallel tracks of traditional fiat (AP2) and stablecoins (x402); the delivery layer currently lacks unified standards.
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Discovery Layer: Solves “How do Agents discover and understand callable services?” On the AI side, A2A Catalog and MCP Registry build standardized capability directories; on the Web3 side, ERC-8004 provides addressable identity pointers. This layer serves as the entry point of the entire protocol stack.
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Trust Layer: Answers “Is the counterparty trustworthy?” The AI side lacks universal standards, while Web3 uses ERC-8004 to build a unified framework for verifiable identity, reputation, and execution records—a key advantage of Web3.
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Ordering Layer: Handles “How are orders expressed and validated?” ACP (OpenAI × Stripe) provides structured descriptions of goods, pricing, and settlement terms, ensuring merchants can fulfill orders. Since real-world commercial contracts are difficult to express on-chain, this layer is largely dominated by Web2.
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Authorization Layer: Deals with “Has the Agent received legitimate user authorization?” AP2 binds intent, confirmation, and payment authorization to real identity systems via verifiable credentials. Web3 signatures currently lack legal standing, so they cannot bear contractual or compliance responsibilities at this layer.
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Payment Layer: Determines “Through which rail is payment executed?” AP2 covers traditional payment networks like cards and banks; x402 provides native API payment interfaces for stablecoins, enabling assets like USDC to be embedded in automated calls. These two rails functionally complement each other.
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Fulfillment Layer: Addresses “How is content securely delivered after payment?” There is currently no unified protocol: real-world delivery depends on merchant systems, while Web3’s encrypted access control lacks cross-ecosystem standards. This remains the biggest gap in the protocol stack and holds the greatest potential for next-generation foundational protocols.
Detailed Analysis of Key Core Protocols in Agentic Commerce
Around the five critical stages of Agentic Commerce—service discovery, trust evaluation, structured ordering, payment authorization, and final settlement—organizations including Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Ethereum, and Coinbase have proposed underlying protocols, collectively building the next-generation core protocol stack for Agentic Commerce.
Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) – Interoperability Protocol for Agents (Google)
A2A is an open-source protocol initiated by Google and donated to the Linux Foundation, designed to provide a unified communication and collaboration standard for AI Agents built on different vendors and frameworks. Based on HTTP + JSON-RPC, A2A enables secure, structured message and task exchange, allowing Agents to engage in multi-round conversations, collaborative decision-making, task decomposition, and state management natively. Its core goal is to build an “internet of agents,” enabling any A2A-compatible agent to be automatically discovered, invoked, and composed into a distributed, cross-platform, cross-organizational agent network.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Unified Tool & Data Access Protocol (Anthropic)
MCP, introduced by Anthropic, is an open protocol connecting LLMs/Agents to external systems, focusing on unifying tool and data access interfaces. It abstracts databases, file systems, remote APIs, and proprietary tools into standardized resources, enabling Agents to securely, controllably, and audibly access external capabilities. MCP emphasizes low integration cost and high scalability: developers need only integrate once to enable Agents to use an entire ecosystem of tools. MCP has already been adopted by several leading AI companies and has become the de facto standard for agent-tool interaction.
MCP focuses on “How Agents use tools”—providing models with unified and secure access to external resources (e.g., databases, APIs, file systems), thereby standardizing agent-tool / agent-data interactions.
A2A solves “How Agents collaborate with other Agents”—establishing native communication standards across vendors and frameworks, supporting multi-round dialogue, task decomposition, state management, and long-lifecycle execution. It is the foundational interoperability layer between agents.
Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) – Checkout & Ordering Protocol (OpenAI × Stripe)
ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) is an open ordering standard (Apache 2.0) proposed by OpenAI and Stripe, establishing a machine-understandable structured ordering process among buyers, AI Agents, and merchants. The protocol covers product information, price and terms validation, settlement logic, and payment credential transmission, enabling AI to securely initiate purchases on behalf of users without becoming merchants themselves.
Its core design allows AI to call merchant checkout interfaces in a standardized way, while merchants retain full commercial and legal control. ACP uses structured orders (JSON Schema / OpenAPI), secure payment tokens (Stripe Shared Payment Token), compatibility with existing e-commerce backends, and supports REST and MCP capability publishing, enabling merchants to join the AI shopping ecosystem without system modifications. ACP is currently used in ChatGPT Instant Checkout and has become an early-deployed, functional payment infrastructure.
Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) – Digital Authorization & Payment Instruction Protocol (Google)
AP2 is an open standard co-launched by Google and multiple payment networks and tech companies, aiming to establish a unified, compliant, and auditable process for AI Agent-led payments. It binds user payment intent, authorization scope, and compliant identity through cryptographically signed digital credentials, providing merchants, payment institutions, and regulators with verifiable evidence of “who is spending money for whom.”
Designed on a “Payment-Agnostic” principle, AP2 supports credit cards, bank transfers, real-time payments, and extends to crypto payment rails like stablecoins via integrations such as x402. Within the Agentic Commerce protocol stack, AP2 does not handle specific product or order details but provides a universal Agent payment authorization framework across various payment channels.
ERC‑8004 – On-Chain Agent Identity / Reputation / Verification Standard (Ethereum)
ERC-8004 is an Ethereum standard proposed jointly by MetaMask, the Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Coinbase, aiming to build a cross-platform, verifiable, trustless identity and reputation system for AI Agents. The protocol consists of three on-chain components:
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Identity Registry: Mints NFT-like on-chain identities for each Agent, attachable to MCP/A2A endpoints, ENS/DID, wallets, and other cross-platform information.
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Reputation Registry: Standardizes the recording of ratings, feedback, and behavioral signals, making Agent performance history auditable, aggregatable, and composable.
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Validation Registry: Supports verification mechanisms like stake re-execution, zkML, and TEE, providing verifiable execution records for high-value tasks.
Through ERC-8004, Agent identity, reputation, and behavior are immutably recorded on-chain, forming a cross-platform, tamper-proof, verifiable trust foundation—an essential infrastructure for Web3 to build an open, trusted AI economy. ERC-8004 is currently in the Review stage, meaning the standard is largely stable and implementable but still undergoing community review before finalization.
x402 – Native Stablecoin API Payment Rail (Coinbase)
x402 is an open payment standard (Apache-2.0) proposed by Coinbase, reviving the long-dormant HTTP 402 Payment Required status code into a programmable on-chain payment handshake mechanism. This enables APIs and AI Agents to achieve accountless, frictionless, on-demand payments on-chain—without requiring accounts, credit cards, or API keys.
▲ Diagram: HTTP 402 Payment Workflow
Source: Jay Yu@Pantera Capital
Core Mechanism: x402 revives the legacy HTTP 402 status code from the early internet. The workflow is:
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Request & Negotiation: Client (Agent) sends request → Server returns 402 status code with payment parameters (e.g., amount, recipient address).
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Autonomous Payment: Agent locally signs and broadcasts transaction (typically using stablecoins like USDC), without human intervention.
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Verification & Delivery: Server or third-party "Facilitator" verifies on-chain transaction and instantly releases resources.
x402 introduces the role of the Facilitator—a middleware connecting Web2 APIs with the Web3 settlement layer. The Facilitator handles complex on-chain verification and settlement logic, allowing traditional developers to monetize APIs with minimal code. The server doesn’t need to run nodes, manage signatures, or broadcast transactions—just rely on the Facilitator’s interface for on-chain payment processing. The most mature Facilitator implementation is currently provided by the Coinbase Developer Platform.
Technical advantages of x402 include: support for on-chain micropayments as low as $0.01, overcoming traditional payment gateways’ inability to handle high-frequency, low-value AI calls; complete removal of accounts, KYC, and API keys, enabling AI to autonomously complete M2M payment loops; and gasless USDC authorization via EIP-3009, with native compatibility on Base and Solana, offering multi-chain scalability.
Based on the introduction of the core protocol stack for Agentic Commerce, the table below summarizes each protocol’s positioning across layers, core capabilities, main limitations, and maturity assessment, providing a clear, structured perspective for building a cross-platform, executable, and payable agent economy.
Representative Projects in the Web3 Agentic Commerce Ecosystem
The current Web3 ecosystem for Agentic Commerce can be divided into three tiers:
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Business Payment Systems Layer (L3): Includes projects like Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, and Nevermined, offering payment encapsulation, SDK integration, quota and permission governance, human approval, and compliance onboarding. These bridge traditional financial rails (banks, card networks, PSPs, KYC/KYB) with machine economies.
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Native Payment Protocols Layer (L2): Composed of protocols like x402, Virtual ACP, and their ecosystem projects, responsible for billing requests, payment verification, and on-chain settlement—the core of truly automated, end-to-end clearing in the current agent economy. x402 operates independently of banks, card networks, and payment service providers, delivering native on-chain M2M/A2A payment capabilities.
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Infrastructure Layer (L1): Includes Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Kite AI, providing the on-chain execution environment, key infrastructure, MPC/AA, and permission runtime for payment and identity systems.
L3 Business Payment Systems Layer - Skyfire: Identity & Payment Credentials for AI Agents
Skyfire centers on KYA + Pay, abstracting “identity verification + payment authorization” into JWT credentials usable by AI, enabling verifiable, automated access and billing for websites, APIs, and MCP services. The system automatically generates Buyer/Seller Agents and custodial wallets for users, supporting top-ups via cards, banks, and USDC.
At the system level, Skyfire creates Buyer/Seller Agents and custodial wallets for each user, supporting balance top-ups via cards, banks, and USDC. Its biggest advantage is full compatibility with Web2 (JWT/JWKS, WAF, API Gateway), enabling “identity-enabled automatic paid access” for content sites, data APIs, and SaaS tools.
Skyfire is a practical Agent Payment middleware, though its identity and asset custody solutions are centralized.
L3 Business Payment Systems Layer - Payman: AI-Native Financial Permission & Risk Control
Payman offers four core capabilities—Wallet, Payee, Policy, Approval—building a governable, auditable “financial permissions layer” for AI. While AI can execute real payments, all financial actions must comply with user-defined quotas, policies, and approval rules. Core interactions occur via the natural language interface payman.ask(), with the system parsing intent, validating policies, and executing payments.
Payman’s key value proposition: “AI can handle money, but never exceeds authority.” It brings enterprise-grade financial governance into AI environments, enabling automated payroll, reimbursements, vendor payments, and bulk transfers within clearly defined permission boundaries. Payman targets internal financial automation for enterprises and teams (salaries, reimbursements, vendor payments), positioning itself as a controlled financial governance layer rather than attempting to build an open Agent-to-Agent payment protocol.
L3 Business Payment Systems Layer - Catena Labs: Agent Identity & Payment Standards
Catena positions itself as an AI-Native financial institution (custody, clearing, risk control, KYA) at the business layer, and ACK (Agent Commerce Kit) at the standards layer, building a unified identity protocol (ACK-ID) and Agent-native payment protocol (ACK-Pay). Its goal is to fill the missing pieces in the machine economy: verifiable identity, authorization chains, and automated payment standards.
ACK-ID establishes ownership and authorization chains for Agents based on DID/VC; ACK-Pay defines payment requests and verifiable receipt formats decoupled from underlying settlement networks (USDC, banks, Arc). Catena emphasizes long-term cross-ecosystem interoperability, positioning itself more like the “TLS/EMV layer of the Agent Economy,” with strong standardization and a clear vision.
L3 Business Payment Systems Layer - Nevermined: Metering, Billing, and Micropayment Settlement
Nevermined focuses on usage-based economic models for AI, offering Access Control, Metering, Credits System, and Usage Logs for automated metering, per-use billing, revenue sharing, and auditing. Users can top up credits via Stripe or USDC, and the system automatically verifies usage, deducts fees, and generates auditable logs on every API call.
Its core value lies in supporting sub-cent real-time micropayments and Agent-to-Agent automated settlements, enabling data purchases, API calls, and workflow scheduling to operate on a “pay-per-call” basis. Nevermined does not create new payment rails but builds a metering/billing layer atop existing ones: short-term, it drives AI SaaS monetization; mid-term, it supports A2A marketplaces; long-term, it could become the micropayment fabric of the machine economy.
Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, and Nevermined belong to the business payment layer and require varying degrees of integration with banks, card networks, PSPs, and KYC/KYB. However, their true value isn't merely “fiat onboarding,” but solving machine-native needs unmet by traditional finance—identity mapping, permission governance, programmatic risk control, and per-use billing.
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Skyfire (Payment Gateway): Provides “identity + automatic deduction” for websites/APIs (mapping on-chain identity to Web2 identity)
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Payman (Financial Governance): Internal enterprise policies, quotas, permissions, approvals (AI can spend but not exceed authority)
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Catena Labs (Financial Infrastructure): Integrates with banking systems via KYA, custody, and clearing services to build AI-compliant banking
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Nevermined (Cashier Layer): Focuses solely on metering and billing above payments; relies on Stripe/USDC for actual payment processing.
In contrast, x402 operates at a deeper level—it is the only native on-chain payment protocol independent of banks, card networks, and PSPs, capable of directly completing on-chain deductions and settlements via the 402 workflow. When upper-layer systems like Skyfire, Payman, and Nevermined can leverage x402 as a settlement rail, they enable truly autonomous M2M/A2A native payment closures for Agents.
L2 Native Payment Protocols Layer - x402 Ecosystem: From Client to On-Chain Settlement
The x402 native payment ecosystem comprises four layers: Client, Server, Payment Execution (Facilitators), and Blockchain Settlement. The client enables Agents or apps to initiate payment requests; the server provides data, inference, or storage APIs on a per-call basis; the payment execution layer completes on-chain deductions, verification, and settlement—the core engine; the blockchain layer handles final token deductions and on-chain confirmation, achieving immutable payment settlement.
▲ Diagram: X402 Payment Flow
Source: x402 Whitepaper
Client-Side Integration Layer (The Payers)
Enables Agents or applications to initiate x402 payment requests—the starting point of the entire flow. Representative projects:
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thirdweb Client SDK—The most widely used x402 client standard, actively maintained and multi-chain compatible, serving as the default developer tool for x402 integration.
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Nuwa AI—Enables AI to directly pay for x402 services without coding—the representative “Agent payment gateway” project.
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The official site also lists Axios/Fetch, Mogami Java SDK, Tweazy—still in early-stage client development.
Current clients remain in the “SDK era,” essentially developer tools. More advanced forms—such as browser/OS clients, robot/IoT clients, or enterprise systems managing multiple wallets/multiple Facilitators—have yet to emerge.
Server / API Providers (The Sellers)
Sell data, storage, or inference services per call to Agents. Key examples include:
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AIsa—Provides billing and settlement infrastructure for real-running AI Agents to access data, content, compute, and third-party services on a per-call, per-token, or volume basis—currently the #1 x402 transaction volume leader.
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Firecrawl—The most frequently consumed web parsing and structured crawling entry point for AI Agents.
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Pinata—Mainstream Web3 storage infrastructure, where x402 now covers actual underlying storage costs beyond lightweight APIs.
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Gloria AI—Delivers high-frequency real-time news and structured market signals—an intelligence source for trading and analytical Agents.
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AEON—Extends x402 + USDC to offline merchant acquiring in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
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Neynar—Farcaster social graph infrastructure, opening social data to Agents via x402.
Current servers focus on crawlers/storage/news APIs. Higher-level critical layers—like financial execution APIs, ad placement APIs, Web2 SaaS gateways, or real-world task-executing APIs—are largely undeveloped, representing the highest-potential growth curve.
Payment Execution Layer (Facilitators / Processors)
Completes on-chain deductions, verification, and settlement—the core engine of x402. Key projects:
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Coinbase Facilitator (CDP)—Enterprise-grade trusted executor, zero fees on Base mainnet with built-in OFAC/KYT—strongest choice for production environments.
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PayAI Facilitator—Fastest-growing and most multi-chain coverage (Solana, Polygon, Base, Avalanche, etc.)—highest usage among multi-chain Facilitators.
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Daydreams—Combines payment execution with LLM inference routing—a powerful scenario-specific project, fastest-growing “AI inference payment executor,” emerging as the third major force in the x402 ecosystem.
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According to x402scan data from the past 30 days, a number of long-tail Facilitators/Routers exist—including Dexter, Virtuals Protocol, OpenX402, CodeNut, Heurist, Thirdweb, x402.rs, Mogami, Questflow—with significantly lower transaction volume, seller count, and buyer count compared to the top three.
Blockchain Settlement Layer
The final destination of the x402 payment flow, responsible for actual token deductions and on-chain confirmation. Although x402 is chain-agnostic, current ecosystem data shows settlement concentrated on two networks:
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Base—Driven by the official CDP Facilitator, native USDC, stable fees—the largest network in transaction volume and seller count.
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Solana—Strongly supported by multi-chain Facilitators like PayAI, growing fastest in high-frequency inference and real-time API scenarios due to high throughput and low latency.
Chains themselves don’t participate in payment logic. As more Facilitators expand, the x402 settlement layer will trend toward greater multi-chain diversity.
In the x402 payment system, the Facilitator is the only entity that truly executes on-chain payments—closest to “protocol-level revenue.” It verifies payment authorization, submits and tracks on-chain transactions, generates auditable settlement proofs, and handles replay, timeout, multi-chain compatibility, and basic compliance checks. Unlike Client SDKs (Payers) and API servers (Sellers), which only handle HTTP requests, the Facilitator acts as the final clearing outlet for all M2M/A2A transactions, controlling traffic and settlement fees—thus occupying the core value capture position in the Agent economy and attracting significant market attention.
However, most projects remain on testnets or small-scale demos—essentially lightweight “payment executors”—lacking moats in identity, billing, risk control, and multi-chain stability, showing low barriers and high homogeneity. As the ecosystem matures, a winner-takes-most dynamic will emerge: leaders with stability and compliance advantages (e.g., Coinbase) hold a clear edge. Long-term, x402 remains an interface layer incapable of capturing core value; sustainable competitive advantage will lie with platforms that build comprehensive identity, billing, risk control, and compliance systems atop settlement capabilities.
L2 Native Payment Protocols Layer - Virtual Agent Commerce Protocol
Virtual’s Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) provides a universal commercial interaction standard for autonomous AI. Through a four-stage process—Request → Negotiation → Transaction → Evaluation—it enables independent agents to securely and verifiably request services, negotiate terms, complete transactions, and undergo quality evaluation. ACP uses blockchain as a trusted execution layer, ensuring auditability and immutability, and introduces Evaluator Agents to create incentive-driven reputation systems. This allows heterogeneous, independent specialist agents to form self-governing commercial entities and conduct sustainable economic activities without central coordination. Currently, ACP is in early stages with limited ecosystem size—more of an exploration into “multi-agent commercial interaction standards.”
L1 Infrastructure Layer - Kite AI: Emerging/Vertical Agent-Native Payment Chain
Mainstream general-purpose public chains like Ethereum, Base (EVM), and Solana provide the most critical execution environments, account systems, state machines, security, and settlement foundations for Agents, featuring mature account models, stablecoin ecosystems, and broad developer adoption.
Kite AI is a representative “Agent-native L1” infrastructure, specifically designing the foundational execution environment for agent payments, identity, and permissions. Its core is based on the SPACE framework (Stablecoin-native, Programmable constraints, Agent-first authentication, Compliance-auditable, Economically viable micropayments), using a three-tier Root→Agent→Session key system for fine-grained risk isolation. Combined with optimized state channels, it builds an “Agent-native payment railway,” reducing costs to $0.000001 and latency to hundreds of milliseconds, making API-level high-frequency micropayments feasible. As a general execution layer, Kite is upward-compatible with x402, Google A2A, and Anthropic MCP, and downward-compatible with OAuth 2.1, aiming to become the unified Agent payment and identity backbone connecting Web2 and Web3.
AIsaNet integrates x402 and L402 (Lightning Labs' 402 payment protocol standard based on the Lightning Network) as a micropayment and settlement layer for AI Agents, supporting high-frequency transactions, cross-protocol call coordination, settlement path selection, and transaction routing—enabling Agents to perform cross-service, cross-chain automated payments without understanding underlying complexity.
Conclusion & Outlook: From Payment Protocols to Restructuring Machine Economic Order
Agentic Commerce represents the establishment of a new, machine-led economic order. It is not simply “AI automatically placing orders,” but a complete restructuring of cross-entity pipelines: how services are discovered, trust established, orders expressed, permissions authorized, value settled, and disputes resolved. The emergence of A2A, MCP, ACP, AP2, ERC-8004, and x402 standardizes the “commercial closed-loop between machines.”
Along this evolutionary path, future payment infrastructure will diverge into two parallel rails: one based on traditional fiat logic for business governance, and another based on the x402 protocol for native settlement. Their value capture logics differ fundamentally.
Business Governance Rail: Web3 Business Payment Systems Layer
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Applicable Scenarios: Low-frequency, non-micropayment real-world transactions (e.g., procurement, SaaS subscriptions, physical e-commerce).
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Core Logic: Traditional fiat will dominate long-term; Agents act as smarter front-ends and process coordinators, not replacements for Stripe/card networks/bank transfers. The hard barrier for stablecoins entering real-world commerce lies in regulation and taxation.
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Projects like Skyfire, Payman, and Catena Labs derive value not from the underlying payment routing (usually handled by Stripe/Circle) but from “machine governance services” (Governance-as-a-Service)—solving machine-native needs unmet by traditional finance: identity mapping, permission governance, programmatic risk control, accountability, and M2M/A2A micropayments (settled per token/second). The key question is: who becomes the trusted “AI financial管家” for enterprises?
Native Settlement Rail: x402 Protocol Ecosystem & the Endgame of Facilitators
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Applicable Scenarios: High-frequency, micropayment, M2M/A2A digital-native transactions (API billing, resource streaming payments).
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Core Logic: x402 (L402), as an open standard, achieves atomic binding of payment and resources via the HTTP 402 status code. In programmable micropayments and M2M/A2A scenarios, x402 currently leads in ecosystem completeness and real-world deployment (HTTP-native + on-chain settlement), potentially becoming the ‘Stripe for agents’ in the Agent economy.
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Simply integrating x402 on the Client or Service side does not yield category premium; true growth potential lies in upper-layer assets with recurring, high-frequency usage—such as OS-level Agent clients, robot/IoT wallets, and high-value API services (market data, GPU inference, real-world task execution).
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Facilitators act as protocol gateways helping Clients and Servers complete payment handshakes, invoice generation, and fund settlement—controlling both traffic and settlement fees, making them the closest to “revenue” in the current x402 stack. Most Facilitators are essentially just “payment executors” with clear low barriers and homogeneity. Giants with usability and compliance advantages (e.g., Coinbase) are forming dominant positions. To avoid marginalization, core value will shift upward to the “Facilitator + X” service layer—offering verifiable service directories, reputation systems, arbitration, risk control, vault management, and other high-margin capabilities.
We believe the future will see a dual-track parallel system of “fiat” and “stablecoin”: the former supporting mainstream human commerce, the latter powering machine-native and on-chain-native high-frequency, cross-border, micropayment scenarios. Web3’s role is not to replace traditional payments, but to provide the foundational capabilities of verifiable identity, programmable settlement, and global stablecoins for the Agent era. Ultimately, Agentic Commerce is not just about payment optimization—it is about restructuring the machine economic order. When billions of microtransactions are automatically completed by Agents in the background, the protocols and companies that first deliver trust, coordination, and optimization will become the core forces of the next generation of global commercial infrastructure.
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