x402 was designed for payments by AI agents, but their share of commercial spending is just 0.6% to 7.5%, TRM estimates.
TRM Labs examined $52.7 million in x402 payments handled by known intermediaries on Base, Solana and Polygon since May 2025. Setting aside wallets paying themselves and other irregular flows left $25.62 million in likely commerce. The agent estimates apply to that smaller total and measure spending, not transaction counts.
TRM found that commerce on Base was concentrated rather than spread across many sellers: in the first half of 2026, much of the activity it could identify went through a single payment contract.
x402 lets software pay for an online service as part of a web request. Binance included x402 payments in its Agent OS launch in August. Coinbase’s Base network also aimed its $1 million accelerator at startups working on agents and payments.
Ordinary scripts can use x402 too, and on the blockchain their payments look exactly like an agent’s. TRM’s broader criteria looked for payments averaging less than $1, with amounts that varied, and put the agent share at 7.5%. For the stricter 0.6% estimate, that pattern had to persist for months. Payers also needed either a public agent registration, an optional step most participants skip, or purchases from more than one seller.
TRM warns that an agent built for one job, paying the same service the same price again and again, would look like a script to these tests.