Coinbase-incubated x402 Protocol Launches AI Robot App Store Agent.market

BlockBeats News, April 21st, the x402 Foundation, incubated by Coinbase, announced the launch of the unified platform Agent.market, aiming to provide an "App Store"-like service entrance for AI robots. The platform is built on the x402 protocol and can help users and robots access hundreds of tools and services.

The x402 protocol is named after the unused HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code, allowing websites, APIs, and AI robots to request and receive instant micropayments through blockchain and traditional payment channels. The protocol is managed as an open standard by the x402 Foundation under the Linux Foundation and has received support from more than 20 institutions and crypto companies, including Cloudflare, Stripe, AWS, Google, Visa, Base, Circle, and the Solana Foundation.

When Agent.market goes live, it will cover seven major categories: Inference, Data, Media, Search, Social, Infrastructure, and Transactions. Service providers include OpenAI, Venice (Inference); Bloomberg, CoinGecko (Data); LinkedIn, X, AgentMail (Social); AWS Lambda, QuickNode, Alechemy (Infrastructure); and Bankr, Coinbase RAT (Transactions), among others. Providers can join the market without the need for a license.

The creator of the x402 protocol, Erik Reppel, stated that there are currently about 69,000 active agent robots on the protocol, completing over 165 million transactions with a total transaction volume of $50 million. He noted that x402-based agent commerce is reshaping the customer acquisition cost for businesses, as robots can now access services at a very low setup cost without the need for API keys.