An online payment protocol introduced by Coinbase in May that enables artificial intelligence agents to transact stablecoins online has seen a more than 10,000% increase in transaction activity over the past month.

At the time, Coinbase said x402 fixes “the Internet's first mistake” by reviving the Internet Communications Protocol's Hypertext Transfer Protocol 402 — or HTTP 402 — to create a seamless payment system native to the Internet.

It allows AI – and humans – to pay directly while using a website or app: they request something, receive an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” prompt, and then send a signed payment in the stablecoin, which x402 then automatically verifies. No credit cards needed.

There were nearly 500,000 x402 transactions between October 14 and 20, representing a 10,780% increase compared to levels seen four weeks ago, according to Dune Analytics data.

Transaction activity was up on Friday, with other Dune Analytics data showing that 239,505 transactions were made, while a record $332,000 in transaction volume was posted on Thursday.

It comes as the cryptocurrency arm of tech-focused venture capital firm a16z mentioned agentic AI in its State of Crypto 2025 report earlier this week – where it predicted autonomous transactions could reach $30 trillion by 2030.

Without the need for human intervention to manage API calls, storage, and computation, proxy AI can enable everything from self-driving taxis that cover their costs with stablecoins to apps that automatically use stablecoins to store data permanently, Coinbase development team members Kevin Livio and Lincoln Moore said in August.