Chainfeeds Summary:
How do the core elements of the Agent economy form a closed loop on Base, and why is the development speed of this ecosystem leading many other chains?
Article source:
https://x.com/PinkBrains_io/status/2018986443637711262
Article Author:
Pink Brains
Opinion:
Pink Brains: The Agent economy isn't about making AI "act like a human," but rather about making the software itself an economic agent. In this model, instead of humans subscribing to tools and manually approving transactions, agents perform the following actions: calling APIs, purchasing data or computing power at extremely fine granular levels, executing transactions or complex workflows, and paying instantly based on results and usage. This model relies on payments being sufficiently cheap, programmable, and reliable. Simultaneously, a basic identity and reputation system is needed among agents to determine "who to trust." Agent behavior is often high-frequency, fragmented, and automated. A large number of x402 transactions are concentrated in the $0.01–$0.10 range, making this payment model almost impossible on high-fee chains. However, Base's transaction costs have remained consistently low, enabling this behavior to occur at scale. Coinbase and Base's official documentation also explicitly position x402 as a payment primitive for agents and paid APIs. Furthermore, Base offers deep USDC liquidity and is highly integrated with Coinbase's funding, settlement, and account systems, significantly reducing friction in deposits, clearing, and accounting. For an autonomous system, predictable costs and stable funding channels are far more important than speculative returns. Coinbase and Base began systematically developing tools and documentation around the Agent scenario early on, covering key modules such as identity, wallet, payment, execution, and messaging, significantly lowering the barrier for teams to move from "experimentation" to "near-production systems" without having to build underlying infrastructure from scratch. At the payment layer, Base explicitly positions x402 as a native HTTP micropayment solution for agents, enabling agents to settle transactions using stablecoins on a request-by-request and result-by-result basis, adapting to high-frequency, low-amount automated transactions. At the execution and fund management layer, the Coinbase Developer Platform provides SDKs for wallet creation, transaction signing, and on-chain execution, allowing agents to interact directly with the blockchain in a near-programmable interface manner. At the communication layer, decentralized messaging protocols such as XMTP enable agents to perform off-chain collaboration and state synchronization, in addition to on-chain payments and identity verification. Furthermore, with the implementation of ERC-8004 on the Base mainnet, agents can register on-chain identities, establishing a portable, cross-platform reputation system, no longer relying on a single application or closed platform. Further, the Base App integrates wallet, payment, and agent interaction into a unified entry point, providing a practically usable distribution interface, allowing Base to increasingly assume the role of settlement and collaboration between agents, even if the agents themselves run locally or off-chain. As infrastructure and distribution channels mature, the agent economy on Base has begun to show economies of scale. In the past 30 days, x402-related transactions exceeded 9 million, with a transaction volume exceeding $1 million; the number of OpenClaw agents registered on Moltbook is approximately 1.6 million; and the cumulative transaction volume of Bankr and Clanker has exceeded $100 million each. Agent trading and issuance activities continue to contribute substantial daily transaction fees. Behind these data lies a gradually taking shape Agent ecosystem: at the bottom layer, protocols such as OpenClaw, x402, and ERC-8004 provide the foundation for Agent execution, payment, and identity; at the resource layer, projects like Ratio1, Sapien, Venice, and Flock cover computing power, data, and training; at the coordination layer, Awe Network, Questflow, and Warden Protocol support multi-Agent orchestration and long-term autonomy; at the execution and transaction layer, projects like Bankr, Definitive, and O1 connect Agents with on-chain capital and markets; at the issuance and monetization layer, platforms like Virtuals and Clanker enable Agents to self-finance and incentivize; and at the market and social layer, applications like OpenWork, Moltroad, and Moltbook allow Agents to begin forming networks of collaboration, transactions, and reputation. Overall, the Base is not merely the operating environment for Agents, but is evolving into the settlement and organizational layer of the Agent economy.
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