According to a report released by analytics firm Chainalysis on June 3, 2026, artificial intelligence (AI) agents using the x402 payment protocol have generated over 100 million transactions on the Base network in just nine months. This data points to the acceleration of the use of autonomous machine-to-machine payments, a technology that allows AI systems to contract for services and access digital resources without human intervention.
x402 protocol developed by Coinbase, You can integrate payments directly into your web requests. As reported by CriptoNoticias, when an AI agent needs to access a service, it receives a payment request, performs the transfer in stablecoins, and resubmits the request with proof of payment.
According to Chainalies, activity went from virtually zero levels in mid-2025 to over 100 million cumulative transactions in the first quarter of 2026. Growth accelerated particularly in the fourth quarter of 2025.
It is worth noting that Part of that increase is related to PING; Meme coin designed as a “Pay to Mint” experiment. This system required users to pay 1 USDC via x402 to receive new tokens. According to the report, this dynamic resulted in weekly transactions increasing by more than 10,000%, enabling PING to handle more than 150,000 operations in the first month.
Although speculation contributed to the initial growth, data suggests usage patterns are evolving. At the beginning of 2025, transactions over $1 accounted for 49% of remittance volume, and by early 2026 that proportion had risen to 95%.
At the same time, trades between USD 0.10 and USD 1 fell from 46% of trading volume to just 4%. For Chainaosis, this change is made by the user. They fund their wallets to cover high payments We’re not just testing micropayments.
Another indicator of increased usage is Convert test users to active users. The company analyzed wallets that first sent money to themselves and then made payments to third parties to test the system. Conversion rates for these users increased 4x in 6 months.
The retention rate also showed a positive trend. Although the first few months saw significant fluctuations in the indicator due to the low number of participants and the impact of speculative episodes such as PING, the proportion of wallets returning each week has gradually increased.
This report also identifies profiles that differentiate between users using x402 and the rest of the Base participants. The average lifetime of wallets associated with this protocol is 197 days, while the average lifetime of all network users is 423 days. In addition, They maintain an average of 26 different assets, while the rest of their user base maintains 4 types of assets.
Chainalysis also notes that these wallets Receive approximately 12x more funds than the average Base walletsuggesting that participants specifically allocate funds to sustain activities related to automatic payments.
It is important to be clear that despite these advances, the company warns: Institutional implementation is still in its early stages And most of the activity continues to be focused on native users of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Additionally, questions remain about how much of the observed growth was driven by sustainable use cases and how much by speculative incentives.
For now, the emergence of a repeat user base and the increasing economic value of transactions suggests that: Autonomous payments between machines are starting to move beyond the experimental stage. In scenarios where AI agents independently perform financial, trading, or data analysis tasks, the ability to make instant and programmable payments is likely to become one of the most relevant applications for cryptocurrency networks in the coming years.
Beyond the volumes achieved so far, the question will be to determine whether this infrastructure can attract companies and institutions requesting large-scale automation services.
(Tag translation) Blockchain
