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Brothers can pay attention to this account, Mira @miranetwork's affiliated account Aven @useaven Specializing in researching 402 agents.

x402 emphasizes the narrative of Agentic Payment Currently, most projects on the market are non-VC projects. There have already been many target analyses, so I won't repeat them. I would like to discuss my understanding of x402 from a product perspective. Long text warning, TLDR: In the current market situation, I personally see the greatest potential in @daydreamsagents' packaged distribution LLM + developer framework's product market fit. 1. x402: From "authorization tool" to "independent economic entity" In my eyes, it is not a fleeting short-term hotspot, especially since it was initiated by the two giants @coinbase and @Cloudflare, and the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) launched by @Google integrates with x402, further expanding x402's business boundaries. Its value needs to be understood in the context of the evolution of Agents: - Early 2023-2024: Agents were merely wrappers for LLMs, at best considered a more advanced chatbot. - Late 2024 to early 2025: The emergence of the MCP protocol made it easier and more standardized for Agents to call external services, allowing Agents to not only have a brain (LLM) but also hands and feet to execute (through services called via MCP), giving rise to the so-called Swarms concept (AI Agent collaborative clusters). However, until this point, the autonomy of Agents was still very limited; calling external services required manual authorization of API keys, and paid services needed human credit cards. Essentially, when faced with external payment walls, they would get stuck and require human intervention. Moreover, the subscription model of SaaS services seems out of place in the context of Agents. Most Agents' calls are very light; would you have an Agent book tickets for you every day? In the case of unpredictable call frequency, fixed costs are clearly not economical. To have an Agent set up a $20/month subscription just to occasionally call a few APIs is simply ridiculous. Data shows that users typically only utilize 20-30% of their subscription quota, with the remaining 70% going to waste. With the emergence of x402 and Google AP2, this pain point is addressed: - Autonomous operation: Through Coinbase Smart Wallet and EIP-3009 signature authorization, Agents can hold USDC for micro-payments for external services, with Base L2 achieving millisecond-level on-chain settlement, evolving from "human-authorized tools" to "independent economic entities," truly achieving 24/7 autonomous operation without human intervention. - Pay-per-use: The precise pay-per-use model for each API call also helps light users save a lot of costs, allowing many marginal services with almost zero service costs (such as idle computing power) to be well monetized. 2. x402 ecosystem chain: Facilitator + Provider The x402 ecosystem chain (not considering the most basic elements like chains, wallets, and developer tools) is actually quite simple. Currently, the main components are Facilitators (payment facilitators) and Providers (Agent service providers). 1) Facilitator (payment facilitator) You can think of it like Alipay, mainly helping to pay, receive money, and verify that the money has been received. The core function is to verify EIP-3009 signatures, broadcast on-chain transactions, and cover gas fees. Current main players: Coinbase CDP (Base chain, zero fees) PayAI Network (Solana/multi-chain, zero fees) Meridian (enterprise-level solution, 1% withdrawal fee) 2) Provider (Agent service provider) Includes everything from information scraping, blockchain RPC, storage, computing power, etc., that Agents might use and purchase. Current services integrated with x402: AI inference: Dreams Router, Hyperbolic Data API: Neynar (social), Zyte (scraping) Storage: Pinata (IPFS) On-chain services: Base RPC 3. Don't overestimate the value of Facilitators I am not bearish on this batch of facilitator projects led by @PayAINetwork; every participant in an early-stage field has room for growth. However, the core functions of facilitators (verifying signatures, broadcasting transactions) indeed have a low technical threshold, and currently, there are 15 facilitators for x402, including pure free solutions like Coinbase Facilitator. In my view, the moat and investment attributes of the facilitator segment are not strong, and it is likely to become a low-margin business. - Low technical threshold: Skilled engineers can create their own facilitators. - Price war tendency: Most facilitators charge 0% fees. - Oversupply: Currently 15, and possibly more in the future. - Giant subsidies driving down prices: Coinbase subsidizes through the Base ecosystem. 4. Early dilemmas for Providers Currently, the number of x402 providers is still very few (only over 30), and apart from large companies like AWS and Hyperbolic that have clearly expressed support, most of the online service providers are of lower tier, mainly consisting of community and small developer services. This is actually normal; in my view, this is a natural conflict between Agent services and SaaS services. 1) Resistance 1: Investment issues Directly integrating x402 requires a certain amount of engineering work and poses a challenge to existing KYC/AML processes for providing services to Agents. For an early market, this investment-to-return ratio may not be worth it for large enterprises to tackle immediately. 2) Resistance 2: Subscription model profits being destroyed Traditional SaaS is highly profitable, making money from users who only use 20-30% of their subscription quota, with the remaining 70-80% idle quota generating pure profit. Let's break down a typical LLM case: ChatGPT Plus subscription: $20/month, an average user uses it 1000 times = implicit rate of $0.02 per use, but OpenAI's actual LLM cost: about $0.005 per use, gross margin from idle quota: 75%. If changed to x402 pay-per-use: User's actual expenditure: 1000 times × $0.010 = $10/month, OpenAI's revenue loss: $20 - $10 = -50%. This is why traditional giants may not be quick to support; it's not that the technology can't do it, but the pricing model and economic rationality dictate that they won't be particularly proactive. The "fixed fee + idle waste" profit model is the cornerstone of these companies' business models, and x402's pay-per-use directly destroys this foundation. In this situation, let alone creating an Agent store and a P2P agent service market. Most core services that Agents want to use are not yet supported by x402; what can be used are merely inconsequential long-tail services that capture little value. Once the scale really picks up, the giants will come in to reap the rewards—didn't @coinbase just launch an x402 Bazaar? So I am skeptical about the ceiling of tokens issued by individual Provider service providers and the product market fit of projects leaning towards P2P agent hiring markets at this stage. 5. Is there a demand for enterprise-level services? In my personal view: not really. At least not at this stage. The product characteristics of x402 naturally determine its user profile: - Pay-per-use micro-payments (precise to each call) - De-accounting (wallet as identity, no KYC required) - Unpredictable call frequency (Agent task-driven) These characteristics determine that its user profile is more inclined towards community developers, experimental projects, and scenarios with low budgets and unpredictable call rates. Once it comes to enterprise-level applications, the demands are completely different: - Enterprise-level SLA guarantees - Predictable cost structure - Large and stable call volumes - Compliance requirements for suppliers In this case, most of these enterprises will still opt for traditional SaaS, as they can negotiate discounts, and on average, the unit cost is much lower, plus there is brand trust backing, and compensation in case of issues. Unless SaaS also enters the Agent service space, but as I mentioned before, this process won't be quick. So for enterprise-level facilitators like @mrdn_finance (focusing on enterprise-level management: 1% withdrawal fee + organizational-level permission control + audit dashboards), I also find it hard to understand their sustainable demand sources, at least for now. Of course, I believe these projects can see this and won't simply bet their fate on a single business angle, but from a valuation perspective, it is indeed not low. 6. The most pragmatic approach: daydream model Since traditional SaaS mostly isn't transitioning to x402 for now, and Provider services are still too few and too early, the most pragmatic approach is to: - Package those core services that are not yet x402-ified - Lower the development threshold for x402 native Agents @daydreamsagents, my understanding is that their Daydream Router and Daydream framework products are the embodiment of these two ideas. 1) Daydream Router The "brain" of the Agent (LLM inference) is a 100% hard requirement and is the starting point for Agents. Although Anthropic has clearly joined the x402 plan, other large model companies may not transition to x402 for a long time and will still use the subscription model. This creates a significant opportunity for middle-layer packaging. And the daydream router does just that: - Uses its own OpenAI enterprise account - Packages it as an x402 interface for Agents - Aggregates 20+ models - Agents call LLM on a pay-per-use basis through standard x402 The router uses Coinbase's facilitator and has the facilitator as a backup, and this business of distributing LLM services to Agents can actually have a very high gross margin. 2) Daydream Framework Packaging LLM only addresses the "supply side" (having usable brain services), but it also needs to address the "demand side" (enabling Agents to have hands and feet). The Daydream team itself is also engaged in building Agent frameworks, transitioning to x402 is quite natural, and this framework helps developers integrate smart wallets, connect each x402 service, incorporate budget control, and handle payment and collection logic, etc. What I value more is that after each Agent is deployed, it will also use the router to call LLM, indirectly increasing the demand for the router product. The revenue generated by the router product will be used for token buybacks. Yes, what they are doing is not complicated, and the business angle is also very simple, but in an early market, one must rely on this pragmatic approach to capture market share and mindshare. 7. x402 is a key step in the development of Agents Returning to the previous questions: - When will the second wave of AI Agents come? - Where is the intersection of Crypto and AI? The answer lies here. An Agent with more economic autonomy is the key to unlocking the Agentic Economy.