Today she becomes the leader in the AI payment segment — and the figures from protocol x402 confirm this.
Over the past week, the volume of daily payments on x402 has increased by 750% and reached $380,000. This is not a surge of speculation, not a one-time hype, and not meme tokens. These are payments made by the machines themselves — AI agents, bots, services, and APIs paying for access to data and computational resources.
The meaning of the protocol is simple: x402 is created based on the HTTP-402 code and allows for gasless transactions in USDC. The AI agent sends a request → the network deducts a micro-payment in stablecoin → the request is processed. No one holds the wallet, no one clicks the 'confirm' button, no one battles with fees — everything works automatically.
Solana has become the number one network for such operations. There are several reasons: minimal delays, high throughput, low transaction costs, and mature integration with USDC. While other blockchains discuss the future of AI, Solana is already servicing a stream of payments from real services. And it is this dynamics that makes the segment unique — it is difficult to manipulate or falsify it.
AI payments are a new type of on-chain demand. If DeFi became the catalyst for Ethereum's growth, then the machine economy could play the same role for Solana. This direction has a key advantage — predictable, repeatable, infrastructure transactions. Such flows are the ones that most often turn into long-term growth drivers.
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