The x402 protocol has ignited market enthusiasm due to the explosive rise of the meme coin $PING, and it has been almost a week since then. So far, the majority of market opinions are positive, with optimistic outlooks on the future development of the x402 protocol and detailed discussions on various projects. However, some voices express concern that the rapid rise of x402 may not be able to sustain the overheated market expectations in the short term, leading to a lack of follow-up momentum.

So, what changes have occurred in the x402 protocol ecosystem over the past week? After reviewing and analyzing the changes in the x402 ecosystem over nearly a week, we can provide an answer to the content of the article's title.

Market Enthusiasm Remains High

Regardless of how the market views the rapid surge of $PING, it has indeed opened up recognition for the x402 protocol among players in the community. Before the surge of $PING, data from the x402 ecosystem over the past 30 days showed that the minting interface for $PING received over 150,000 x402 transactions, amounting to approximately $140,000, far surpassing the second-ranked Questflow, which had only 24,800 transactions and less than $1,400 in volume.

However, now, data from just 24 hours has already far exceeded the past 30 days' data. In the past 24 hours, the top 10 services by interaction activity have received approximately 280,000 transactions, which is already double the previous 30 days' data. Meanwhile, the amount reached approximately $246,000, also double the previous 30 days' data.

It can be said that as of now, the x402 protocol is certainly not a flash in the pan and continues to be welcomed by the market.

Shift of Speculative Focus from Meme to Applications

As the first meme coin born from the x402 protocol, $PING was once compared by many players to the first token of the former BRC-20 protocol, $ORDI, during its most FOMO phase. However, after briefly surpassing a market cap of $80 million, $PING has not been able to continue its rapid ascent and has currently retraced to a market cap of about $29 million.

The drive of meme coins relies on market sentiment. After a tweet from OKX CEO Star featuring a screenshot of $PING, the lack of more sentiment-driving tweets in the short term made $PING's retracement understandable.

Unlike BRC-20 and other inscription asset protocols, the x402 protocol itself is a payment + AI Agent-focused protocol. Therefore, players' enthusiasm and funds have not withdrawn from the x402 protocol but have instead shifted to applications related to the x402 ecosystem.

$PAYAI has emerged as a new leader in the x402 protocol. Yesterday, the market cap of $PAYAI briefly surpassed $76 million, having risen approximately 12 times since October 24. Currently, the coin has retraced to a market cap of about $53 million.

This is mainly due to two factors. The primary reason is that Payai is currently the second-largest Facilitator (verification and settlement service provider on the x402 protocol chain) after Coinbase:

Currently, PayAI has processed over 14% of x402 transactions, making it the largest Facilitator after Coinbase in terms of transaction volume.

Additionally, Payai's founder, Notorious, is the 7th largest contributor on the official x402 protocol GitHub, which players interpret as a "close connection between the project and the x402 protocol."

Tokens related to the ecosystem, such as $dreams and $SANTA, have also seen significant gains. For a deeper understanding of these ecosystem-related projects, refer to last week's article on Rhythm BlockBeats titled "What is the x402 protocol, like the 30x big dog of inscriptions?."

Even some projects that merely mentioned plans to develop x402-related projects have experienced sudden surges in the past few days, such as Karum and Praxis. Currently, these projects have seen significant retracements after the short-term emotional heat dissipated, highlighting the risks brought by FOMO.

Multi-Chain Layout in the x402 Track

The popularity of the x402 protocol has not only attracted players but also garnered attention from multiple chains. As an open protocol that is inherently designed to support multi-chain, Coinbase's own Base chain, as its "home," goes without saying, while the development of x402 on Solana and BNB is also worth our attention.

Yesterday, Solana founder toly tweeted, "x402 is cool."

This tweet caused the $x402 meme coin on Trend.fun to briefly surpass a market cap of $4 million. Trends.fun founder mable subsequently posted on social platform X, proposing to hold an "x402 Solana Hackathon" to seek good AI payment projects, receiving support from Jacob Creech, the head of Solana's global developer ecosystem.

Tokens like $PAYAI and $dreams, which have performed well in the market, are also on Solana, giving Solana a certain advantage at present.

The official BNB chain Twitter also promoted four x402 protocol-related projects on BNB chain yesterday: Unibase, pieverse, AEON.xyz, and TermiX AI.

Felix Fan, head of the OKX Web3 wallet mobile team, tweeted yesterday that he received support from Bob Xu, a core contributor to the x402 protocol, to explore permissionless transactions between AI Agents on the X Layer:

Unlike the early Bitcoin ecosystem, which went unnoticed, the x402 protocol has garnered multi-chain attention right from its explosive rise, and we believe its development will be even faster.

Conclusion

After analyzing the changes in the x402 ecosystem over the past week, we can now answer the question posed in the article's title.

Firstly, the main reason for the sustained popularity of x402, in my opinion, is the background of Coinbase. The biggest challenge for the long-term development of this protocol is to first "expand" merchants and then "adopt" users. Since this is Coinbase's own protocol, and it has jointly established a foundation with CloudFare, it theoretically has sufficient resources to promote large-scale adoption.

This is also why, despite the existence of some similar competitors, such as bitGPT's h402 and Radius's EVMAuth, there has not been a frenzy of new BRC-XXX protocols being minted and issued like in the past with BRC-20—Coinbase's brand itself serves as a speculative driving force for players.

Secondly, compared to the early BRC-20, which had no narrative to support other than issuing new meme coins, the meme coin of x402 is inherently "the icing on the cake." Players have many application targets to choose from beyond meme coins, and these targets align with the narrative of the protocol itself. Although there may be doubts about the immaturity of these applications, this is not significant for players. As long as there is space for funds to move within the narrative, they won't all rush in at once and then all rush out.

It has been quite a while since we have seen a fresh narrative like the x402 protocol that generates high enthusiasm among cryptocurrency players, project parties, and ecosystem participants alike. Not only have meme coins been extremely popular, but application coins have also regained players' attention, marking a good start.

However, regardless of how optimistic one may be about the prospects of the x402 ecosystem, everyone should still be cautious of the investment risks during periods of overheated sentiment.

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