Cybersecurity giant Cloudfarm plans to launch a dedicated stablecoin, Net Dollar, for AI agents. According to media reports, Coinbase and crypto infrastructure startup Zerohash are competing to issue a dedicated stablecoin for Cloudflare, which is expected to be launched within 2026. This stablecoin is the NET Dollar (1:1 dollar anchored stablecoin) announced by Cloudflare as early as September 2025, positioned as the basic payment tool for "agentic web" (proxy network/agent network). Its CEO Matthew Prince said at the time that this was to create a "new business model of AI driving the Internet" - no longer relying on advertising, but turning to pay per use, so that AI intelligent bodies can independently browse, negotiate, pay and trade. 1. Why do we need stablecoins? 1) The traditional payment system (Visa/Mastercard) has high fees (1.5% -3.5%) and slow settlement, which cannot meet the needs of AI agents for thousands of micro payments (a fraction of a cent) per second. 2) Stablecoins, especially those based on blockchain such as Coinbase, have obvious advantages: fees are less than 1 cent, instant settlement, and programmability. As the world's top CDN and network security company (handling about 20% of Internet traffic), Cloudflare is naturally suitable for "embedding" stable currency into the infrastructure layer, and has the potential to become the core payment track of AI agent economy. 2. NET Dollar format Last year, Cloudflare and Coinbase have jointly launched the x402 Foundation (an open Internet payment standard based on HTTP 402 protocol) to simplify websites/developers to receive stable currency payments. This competition to release NET Dollar is a collaborative upgrade version. According to the official promotional positioning, NET Dollar is an independent brand stablecoin, issued and managed by a third-party professional organization (the winner in Coinbase or Zerohash), while Cloudflare provides branding, traffic integration, payment protocols (x402, etc.), and usage scenarios. If Coinbase wins, NET Dollar should be released on the base chain. 3. Why does Cloudfarm launch stablecoins? What are the advantages? 1) Official intention From advertising driven to pay per use model, the Internet business model has relied on advertising platforms and bank transfers for decades, and the next generation model will be driven by pay per use, fractional payments and microtransactions - which can lead incentives to truly valuable original content. ” The purpose of NET Dollar is to enable creators to directly profit from unique content, developers to easily monetize APIs, and AI companies to fairly compensate for content sources (solving the problem of "freeloading" content in AI models). 2) Absolute dominance of global traffic and edge networks Cloudflare currently handles about 20% of the world's Internet requests, and its CDN network is deployed in 300+cities. Payment can be completed directly at the edge layer with extremely low latency and huge throughput. Once any website connects to Cloudflare, it can support NET Dollar at almost zero cost - with its core competitive advantage. 3) The native integration of x402 protocol (jointly promoted with Coinbase) is the killer advantage! X402 has revived the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, making payments a part of standard HTTP requests (as natural as loading a regular webpage). AI agents or developers can achieve "request content → automatic payment → immediate access" with just one line of code. For developers and AI agents, Cloudfarm is the underlying network infrastructure that cannot be bypassed. If you want your agents to respond faster and have lower latency, Cloudfarm is naturally the first choice. Once connected to Cloudfarm, it is easy to integrate NET Dollar. For Cloudfarm, the natural goal is to leverage its advantages in edge and CDN networks to promote the popularity of NET Dollar. Agent agents supporting NET Dollar payments will be fast and have lower latency. This is the absolute physical advantage that Cloudfarm's CDN network deployed in 300 cities worldwide can guarantee. So from Cloudflare's perspective The core purpose and strategic goal of launching NET Dollar is to upgrade itself from an "Internet infrastructure provider" to an "Internet financial track provider in the AI era" and completely reshape the Internet business model. This is not just to issue a stable currency, but to build the underlying payment infrastructure for the upcoming Agentic Web (Agent Internet/AI Agent Internet), seize the payment base of AI Internet, and have the potential to become the de facto payment standard of AI agent economy. If NET Dollar is successfully embedded into its platform, it will cover millions of developers/enterprises and also enable payment for network effects. Future AI proxy shopping, API calling, payment content and other scenarios may default to Cloudflare's stablecoin track. For the entire industry, accelerating the implementation of the machine economy era and solving the last mile (payment) problem in the AI economy. Of course, this has also led to fierce and intense competition in AI payments, especially with USDC already having a certain first mover advantage, and payment giant Stripe (which has acquired Bridge) actively expanding its presence. However, it seems that Cloudflare also has its own core advantages.