Original Title: "x402 'Pragmatic Faction' List: Who is Really Driving x402?"
Original Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
In the current rapid development of AI, AI agents are gradually becoming independent economic entities. They need to autonomously purchase data, call APIs, rent computing power, etc. However, traditional payment systems struggle to meet these high-frequency, small-amount, automated payment needs. Against this backdrop, the x402 protocol has emerged.
x402 is an open-source payment protocol led by Coinbase and supported by giants such as Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Hyperbolic, Google, and Cloudflare. The core function of x402 is to enable autonomous micropayments for AI agents through the HTTP 402 status code, allowing AI agents or software clients to pay directly with USDC without needing an API key, achieving machine-to-machine (M2M) autonomous settlement, and truly enabling AI agents to "pay."
In the article "PayAI Surpasses PING! Changes in x402 Ecological Value Anchors," we discussed the ebb and flow of growth momentum between PING and PayAI, which reflects an important issue: the x402 ecosystem is transitioning from concept to reality, shifting from speculation to practicality.
This article will focus on the "infrastructure faction" and "pragmatic faction" projects within the x402 ecosystem (excluding the main developers of x402). It is important to clarify that the x402 ecosystem is still in the very early stages of infrastructure improvement and commercial validation, with a lack of mature reference systems for project selection. At this point, it is still too early to determine whether a project can succeed; the key lies in whether the product can create real demand. Additionally, it is necessary to assess the "necessity" and "frequency" of the demand to drive users and AI agents to actively use x402 for payments, avoiding the trap of false demand. Furthermore, is the path to profitability for the product clear? Can it support the long-term operation of the project?
x402 Facilitators / Services / Endpoints
Kite AI
Kite AI is building a foundational trading layer for the "Agentic Internet," providing unified identity, payment, and governance infrastructure for autonomous agents. On February 10, 2025, Kite AI launched the AI consensus mechanism PoAI (Proof of AI) L1 sovereign blockchain testnet.
Kite AI has natively integrated with the x402 agent payment standard, positioning itself as the main execution and settlement layer for the protocol, allowing AI agents to seamlessly send, receive, and reconcile payments through standardized intent instructions.
In September 2025, Kite AI announced the completion of a $33 million funding round, with the latest Series A funding amounting to $18 million, led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst. The funding will be used to accelerate Kite AI's progress in building the Agentic Internet. Following this, Kite AI also received strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures, with the new funds aimed at supporting the development of its autonomous AI agent payment infrastructure and collaborating with Coinbase to accelerate the large-scale adoption of the x402 protocol.
Questflow
Questflow focuses on building the orchestration layer for multi-agent economies, allowing AI agents to autonomously research, execute actions, and earn rewards on-chain, supporting multi-agent collaboration and integration across Web2/Web3 services, and facilitating inter-agent payments and monetization through the x402 protocol.
Questflow is a key player in the x402 ecosystem and a partner of Google's agent payment protocol (AP2). Recent developments regarding x402 include extending x402 to the Mantle chain and X Layer.
Questflow's autonomous network task agent group S.A.N.T.A operates as a core component of the Virtuals protocol, serving as a gateway for the x402 protocol. S.A.N.T.A is launching the SANTA multi-chain Facilitator, currently supporting the Mantle network.
In terms of funding, Questflow completed a $1.5 million angel round in July 2024, led by MiraclePlus (founded by former Microsoft executive vice president, YC partner, and former Baidu COO Lu Qi). A year later, in July 2025, Questflow completed a $6.5 million seed round led by cyber•Fund, with participation from Delphi Labs and received grants from Aptos, Coinbase Developer Platform, and Virtuals Protocol.
Questflow itself has not issued tokens, but its S.A.N.T.A token currently has a market value of $11.6 million.
Crossmint
Crossmint is an enterprise-level API platform for wallets, stablecoins, and agent commerce, announcing in March 2025 that it raised $23.6 million in seed, Series A, and strategic rounds, led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Nyca, First Round, and Lightspeed Faction. In September, Crossmint received strategic investment from Circle Ventures.
Crossmint's solutions enable businesses to easily create embedded wallets (with optional custodial or non-custodial options), issue and distribute NFTs, and manage on-chain credentials. Additionally, Crossmint has designed a dedicated API for AI agents, allowing them to autonomously manage funds, execute transactions, and obtain digital credentials.
Previously, Crossmint released an example of agent commerce using the XMTP protocol on the Base app, featuring a custom payment processor "x402 Server" for cryptocurrency transactions to Amazon.
Next, we will introduce x402 Facilitators. x402 Facilitators are service providers that support processing x402 payments on Solana and EVM networks, providing unified endpoint access to verify and settle payments for HTTP resources on-chain under the x402 protocol.
Source: x402scan
These Facilitators are the core infrastructure layer of the x402 payment ecosystem, responsible for verifying and settling on-chain payments for HTTP resources using the x402 protocol.
PayAI (Token Market Value: $27.3 Million)
In terms of transaction volume, PayAI has become the largest x402 Facilitator aside from Coinbase, supporting multiple networks such as Base, Solana, and Polygon. As of the time of writing, PayAI has processed 13.78% of the total transaction count for x402, accounting for 13.27% of the total transaction volume. In contrast, Coinbase's market share has declined to about 80%.
In addition to x402 payment services, PayAI has launched the following products:
· x402 Echo Merchant: Supports end-to-end testing of any x402 client.
· Freelance AI: An AI agent marketplace built on open technologies such as libp2p, IPFS, ElizaOS, and Solana, allowing agents to publish services, find experts, and securely handle payments.
PayAI is currently developing the following features:
· CT Agent monetization functionality.
· Token Gateway: Allows merchants to receive payments using their own tokens and grants functional access to token holders.
Regarding PayAI's token economics, the total supply of tokens is 1 billion, with all tokens circulating at launch (March 2025). The PayAI team will purchase 20% of the token supply at the time of token release and transfer it to the project treasury, which will be used for operations, marketing, and future token releases, such as community rewards and partnerships. Specifically, half of the treasury tokens will provide liquidity to generate fees, while the other half will vest linearly over one year.
x402.rs
x402.rs is built for crypto-native APIs, pay-per-request services, and autonomous agents, while also operating as an x402 Facilitator.
thirdweb
thirdweb, as a Web3 developer platform, has recently made moves in the x402 space, with recent initiatives including:
Supporting x402 payments in the thirdweb SDK, enabling developers to monetize their backend and agent services through seamless, automated crypto payments.
Launching Nexus, allowing AI agents to use services without accounts or API keys, meaning it supports monetizing endpoints through x402, enabling agents to discover and pay API access fees immediately. thirdweb states that its dedicated gasless Facilitator wallet supports over 80 chains and more than 4,000 tokens.
Corbits
Corbits focuses on building software for "Agentic Commerce." Corbits' advantage lies in its use of the Faremeter framework, which is open-source, modular, and specifically built for x402, supporting agent-driven transactions and can flexibly integrate with any payment standard, network, or wallet through plugin modules, while quickly onboarding new payment solutions and digital assets. Currently, Corbits is primarily building on the Polygon and Solana networks.
Notably, at the end of October, Corbits collaborated with the AI project Dark (@darkresearchai) to launch an open-source agent and mobile toolkit called Mallory, combining AI chat with practical functionality, supported by x402 and built on React Native.
For example, when you chat with Mallory, it will take real actions, such as using Nansen to analyze on-chain data, without requiring you to subscribe to anything.
Daydreams (Token Market Value: $12 Million)
Daydreams.Systems focuses on building autonomous agents and applications on the x402 payment track, currently supporting networks such as Base, Solana, and Starknet.
The main tools within the Daydreams.Systems ecosystem include the open-source agent framework Daydreams, Daydreams Router, and the autonomous agent operation platform LUCID.
Among them, Daydreams supports the construction of autonomous AI agents, featuring a composable Context architecture that allows for the creation of agents from modular components, leveraging real memory, MCP integration, and TypeScript-first design. Additionally, Daydreams.Systems launched Daydreams Router in July, which provides a crypto-native way to access cutting-edge models like GPT, Claude, Groq, Gemini, and Gwen, enabling intelligent routing of AI model requests through instant USDC settlement, built on x402. The upcoming LUCID will combine AI, x402, and ERC-8004.
Daydreams.Systems is also one of the x402 Facilitators, currently supporting Solana, Base, and Abstract networks.
As of the time of writing, the Daydreams token DREAMS has a current market value of $12 million.
AurraCloud (Token Market Value: $7.5 Million)
AurraCloud focuses on building x402-driven AI agent infrastructure, allowing users to create AI agents in minutes and providing hosted MCP tools, smart wallet features, x402 payments, and x402 gated reasoning services.
AurraCloud also operates as an x402 Facilitator, helping merchants and businesses quickly accept crypto payments.
The AurraCloud token AURA has a current market value of $7.5 million.
Mogami
Mogami focuses on building an open-source software stack for the x402 protocol, providing an SDK, tools, and services built with Java.
Mogami's core products include the Mogami x402 SDK, the x402 payment gateway "Mogami Facility Server," and the x402 console, also serving as a payment gateway for x402.
AEON
AEON focuses on building a full-chain crypto payment framework, providing a crypto payment orchestration solution AEON Pay, which connects crypto payments with global fiat acquisition channels for seamless on-chain and off-chain settlement. AEON also offers a Stripe-like experience through AEON Checkout and AEON AI Payment, providing crypto payment checkout infrastructure for Web2/Web3 merchants and AI agents.
On October 28, AEON announced the launch of an x402 Facilitator on the BNB Chain, enabling AI agents to securely and verifiably execute on-chain transactions. Additionally, after each transaction, an immutable receipt containing the agent's unique identity is generated (according to ERC-8004), creating a tamper-proof audit trail for accountability and reconciliation. Beyond the BNB Chain, AEON will continue to expand the x402 standard and its AI payments across multiple blockchains.
It is worth mentioning that AEON was previously selected for the BNB Chain's tenth season "Most Valuable Builder" (MVB) accelerator program.
Others
Firecrawl
Firecrawl provides easy-to-integrate APIs and SDKs for AI platforms, transforming websites into LLM-ready data, with output formats including Markdown, JSON, HTML, images, and news content.
Recently, Firecrawl added a new endpoint supporting x402 payment standards, allowing any wallet-equipped agent to perform web searches and optionally scrape search results. Prices are displayed via HTTP 402 requests, with USDC payments settled on-chain, and results returned automatically.
Firecrawl completed a $14.5 million Series A funding round led by Nexus Venture Partners in August 2025, with other investors including Y Combinator, Zapier, and Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke.
Heurist (Token Market Value: $6.7 Million)
Heurist is building a full-stack AI infrastructure, including Heurist Cloud (accessing AI models via simple APIs), Heurist Mesh (agent marketplace), and Heurist Chain (ZK Layer-2 for agent payments).
Heurist has integrated x402 into Heurist Mesh and Deep Research, where Heurist Mesh allows agents to autonomously trade, build specialized functions, and settle payments on-chain. Heurist Deep Research is an AI-driven research platform built for Web3, with a query fee of 1 USDC (paid via x402).
The Heurist token HEU has a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens, with utility including payment for AI services, staking, voting governance, and serving as a gas token for transactions on Heurist Chain.
t54.ai
t54.ai focuses on building a trust layer for "trusted agent finance," specifically providing secure infrastructure for the x402 protocol to help AI agents mitigate risks in autonomous payments and transactions, achieving a frictionless agent economy.
The core product of t54.ai is the basic trust layer for agent payments, x402-secure, which enhances the security of the x402 protocol, providing programmable trust and verifiable payments, and also offers pre-settlement protection through the t54.ai agent-native risk engine Trustline.
Additionally, t54.ai provides a dashboard regarding the health of the x402 ecosystem.
Tools
x402 Ecosystem
The x402 Ecosystem is an official summary website released by Coinbase, listing innovative projects, tools, and applications in the x402 ecosystem from aspects such as client integration, services/endpoints, infrastructure and tools, learning and community resources, and Facilitators.
x402scan
x402scan is a monitoring and analysis tool for the x402 protocol ecosystem launched by Merit Systems, currently supporting Base and Solana networks.
x402scan serves as the "on-chain browser + agent dashboard" for the x402 ecosystem, tracking all x402 payments, agent activities, transaction data, and Facilitators in real-time, helping developers, AI agents, and users gain insights into the operational status of "Agentic Commerce."
x402station
x402station is a comprehensive x402 analysis platform for monitoring x402 services, tracking performance, obtaining real-time x402 analytical insights, and exploring pay-per-use APIs supported by the x402 protocol.
x402 Extensions
Vistara Labs / b402
Vistara Labs is a selected project from the sixth season of the Binance Labs incubation program (September 2023) and completed a Pre-Seed funding round in November 2023, led by D1 Ventures and Factor.
Vistara Labs is an internet agent execution layer. Its agent internet layer Vistara OS transforms passive browsing into real-time deployment, remixing, and revenue generation, powered by the Zara Agents Engine.
Recently, Vistara Labs' self-developed factory zara has supported seamless payments between agents using x402, enabling one-click deployment of AI-driven Web3 micro-businesses (such as content monetization).
On October 25, 2025, Vistara Labs announced it would bring x402 to the BNB Chain through b402. b402 will support agent payments using all BEP-20 tokens, primarily achieved through the B402 relay acting as a trusted intermediary. Most BEP-20 tokens have not implemented EIP-3009, which cannot natively handle the "authorized transfer" operation for signatures.
The zara token ZARA currently has a market value of $1.8 million, and its recent decline may be related to the removal of zara from the Vistara Labs official Twitter introduction.
Pieverse
Pieverse announced at the end of this month that it will launch the x402b protocol, bringing the x402 protocol to the BNB Chain through the Pieverse Facilitator.
Specifically, Pieverse achieves gas-free payments through the USDT wrapped token pieUSD, which supports EIP-3009. Additionally, its custom Facilitator automatically generates jurisdiction-compliant receipts during payment settlement and stores them immutably on BNB Greenfield to address tax and audit issues.
Pieverse previously completed a $7 million strategic funding round in late October, led by Animoca Brands and UOB Ventures. Pieverse also received support from Binance's MVB ninth season program.
Pieverse will conduct a Pre-TGE event on Binance Wallet from 16:00 to 18:00 on October 29.
Meridian (Token Market Value: $2.9 Million)
Meridian is a blockchain project focused on the x402 payment protocol, designed specifically for the agent economy.
Meridian has decided to adopt Across to implement its x402 protocol. Meridian believes that "Across is the best technology for enabling quick settlements for AI agents and those transacting on x402 when payments need to be transferred between different EVM networks with their own RPC configurations. When sending back to Ethereum from L2, there is a fraud prevention window that can sometimes take up to 7 days to settle. Meridian will leverage Across's technology to completely bypass this fraud prevention window, supporting all EVM chains for rapid settlements. This approach also allows agents using x402 to make mutual payments using tokens other than USDC."
The Meridian token MRDN currently has a market value of $2.9 million.
Summary
Although the x402 protocol has attracted support from numerous leading tech companies and crypto projects, and the ecosystem participants are continuously expanding, the x402 ecosystem is still in its early development stage.
Community users exhibit a clear polarization in their attitudes towards x402, with some expressing expectations and optimism for the new paradigm of the agent economy, while others raise doubts about the protocol's maturity, practical application value, and dispute resolution.
According to the x402 roadmap, the x402 protocol will explore the integration of x402 Bazaar with ERC-8004, e-commerce refunds and escrow processes, arbitrary token support, Facilitator Router, and other user concerns in 2026.
The advancement of these roadmap projects represents the transition of the x402 ecosystem from concept to infrastructure development, and then to application implementation and ecosystem improvement. If these goals can be achieved on time or ahead of schedule in 2026, it will further validate the feasibility and value of x402 as a payment standard for the agent economy, potentially driving the entire AI agent ecosystem from the experimental phase to the commercialization phase.
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