Chainfeeds Summary:
Analysis of all x402 transaction data in December 2025 revealed that more than 1,100 projects participated, generating 63 million payments totaling approximately US$7.5 million USDC.
Article source:
https://x.com/bc1beat/status/2007180567436255725
Article Author:
EH
Opinion:
EH: The HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code was defined in 1997 but was never actually used. The reason is simple: processing a $0.01 payment with a credit card incurs a $0.30 fee, a whopping 3000%. Micropayments were doomed from the start. Until the emergence of stablecoins, everything changed. December 2025 data overview: 63 million transactions, $7.5 million USDC in circulation, 64,000 unique buyers, 10,000 unique sellers, and an average transaction amount of only $0.12. In comparison: Visa's minimum feasible transaction amount is approximately $15, while x402 is processing 100 times fewer payments and has achieved scalability. The ecosystem is experiencing explosive growth: over 1100 independent projects, over 4800 mainnet endpoints, 6 active payment coordinators, most service providers are small, and there is no clear dominant player. What exactly are people building? Data services: 31%; AI/LM: 25%; Blockchain: 15%. This isn't a meme. It's not speculation. It's real infrastructure: APIs, data analytics, model inference. Base or Solana: who's winning? Data shows Base accounts for 53% of transaction volume (developers' home), while Solana accounts for 37% (production runtime). Base is backed by the Coinbase ecosystem. Solana boasts extreme speed. Which one you choose depends on your use case. But isn't this all just inflated volume? Frankly: Artemis found that 47% of transactions were inflated in the leaderboard. But these transactions only accounted for 14% of the USD transaction volume. The smaller the transaction amount, the cleaner the funds. The core logic of micropayments has been validated. A billion-dollar problem that no one has solved yet: what happens when an AI Agent makes a mistake? x402 solved "how the Agent pays." But it hasn't solved: Agent identity (KYA, Know Your Agent), reputation systems, and dispute arbitration mechanisms. Whoever can fill these three gaps wins. 63 million transactions a month, averaging $0.12 per transaction. The protocol works. The economic model works. The developers are already there. The only question is: what are you planning to build on top of it?
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