ryan gentryCEO of Bitcoin Infrastructure Acquisition Corp. index 402. This directory will act as a bridge. This allows artificial intelligence (AI) agent developers to discover operational payment APIs, and allows providers to list their APIs. endpoint To gain visibility.
As Gentry reported on March 22, the first effects were immediate. In just 72 hours, the number of providers who verified their presence in the index increased by 26%, and directory consultations increased by 50 times (although the underlying numbers were not specified). Plus, over 100 new endpoint directly.
Considering these results, brian armstrongCoinbase’s CEO gave enthusiastic support, saying, “Great job!”
and the last stop A specific address to send data requests to. Before this index, there was no centralized registry that reported in real time which access points required payment or whether they were active.
To accommodate this growth, the Index 402 team has implemented a server update that allows the AI agent to autonomously query the directory itself. This improvement is Reduces computational resource consumption by 85%. Gentry also announced that the approval process for new registrations will soon be 100% automated.
Officially announced as the first tool of its kind on March 19, the 402 Index is already Has over 15,000 active access pointsavailability is checked hourly.
Data from index 402
When we surveyed those 15,000 people, endpointthe index revealed additional information. Currently, three different standards coexist for payment processing between AI agents, but none dominates the market.
- L402was developed by Lightning Labs on the Bitcoin Lightning Network in 2019 and leads in terms of quality: 43% endpoint Index health checks pass.
- x402was launched by Coinbase in 2025 and has the largest concentration of active providers.
- MPPprepared by the companies Stripe and Tempo.
All three share a common root. HTTP code 402 has been reserved in Internet protocols since the 1990s under the description “Payment Required,” but it was never formally implemented because there was no digital currency to support it.
Each of the above standards uses 402 codes as the technical basis for requiring payment before allowing access to a service.
This struggle has concrete results. Each standard implies a different payment infrastructure. L402 runs on the Lightning Network, while x402 and MPP run on other layers.
The standards imposed may therefore determine which networks between AI agents perform automated payments, and while there are no dominant applications yet in this market, companies such as Anthropic and Stripe already have a position.
L402 and Lightning: Projects already in production
The 402 Index maps the ecosystem, but two initiatives reported by CriptoNoticias They’re already working on L402 with AI agents and Lightning Network (LN) Bitcoin.
On February 12th, Lightning Labs released an open source toolset to enable AI agents Pay, collect, and authenticate using Bitcoin without a bank account or traditional API keys.
The core is exactly L402. When an agent tries to access an API protected by that standard, the service responds with a 402 code and a Lightning invoice. Agents pay their bills and receive cryptographic credentials that act as access credentials, without any prior registration or user requirements.
To reduce the risk of giving economic access to autonomous agents, Lightning Labs adds remote signing (the private key is stored on a separate device) and restricted credentials that limit the amount of money agents can spend and the operations they can perform.
A previous effort reported by CriptoNoticias on January 31 follows a similar logic. The Lightning Enable team introduced another open source tool that connects AI agents to Lightning wallets via the Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC) protocol. It is a decentralized communication standard that establishes the link between agents and wallets without intermediaries.
This Lightning Labs tool allows developers to You can set a maximum spending budget– Once the allocated balance is exhausted, the agent will no longer be able to automatically make payments. Payments are restricted to Lightning BOLT11 addresses, an invoice format that includes the recipient’s signature and a fixed amount, preventing payments to unauthorized recipients or amounts other than the set amount. This tool is also built on L402.
Both projects aim for the same model. This means that AI agents will autonomously pay for digital services in pennies or cents, without any human intervention in each transaction. In this context, the 402 Index serves as a first map of a region that is still taking shape.
(Tag Translation) Bitcoin (BTC)
