The rise of the agentic economy

The digital economy still revolves around people. We pay with cards and apps, all designed for human users. But with the rise of artificial intelligence, new systems are emerging that not only process information but can also act and pay autonomously. This is the essence of the agentic economy: an economy where AI agents exchange value and make economic decisions on their own.

One of the first protocols making this possible is x402, developed by Coinbase in collaboration with Google and Cloudflare. Together, they are building a new internet standard that enables AI agents to make payments through the existing HTTP web protocol. The name refers to the 402 Payment Required status code, which now finally gains meaning. When an AI agent requests access to a paid service, the server returns a 402 response with the price and payment details. After payment, for instance in USDC on Base, the agent instantly gains access.

For the first time, machines and agents can make payments without human intervention or traditional accounts. This adds a new payment rail to the internet, designed for autonomous systems: fast, automatic, and scalable. It opens the door to new business models, such as pay-per-use APIs or datasets traded directly between agents.

From humans to machines

The agentic economy marks a major shift: from human-driven to machine-driven value exchange. AI agents can purchase computing power, rent storage, or sell data entirely on their own. Where DeFi built financial infrastructure without banks, x402 lays the foundation for an internet where machines and agents transact directly with each other.

That brings both opportunities and challenges. Who is responsible when an agent makes an error or abuses a service? How does compliance work when the payer isn’t a person but an algorithm? Still, the direction is clear: the combination of AI and blockchain is creating a new economic layer where payments are not a barrier but a building block for collaboration. Protocols like x402 form the foundation of that future — an economy where not only humans, but also AI agents and machines, participate in the financial system.