Coinbase Announces Upgrade for x402 Protocol Enabling Usage-Based Pricing

Coinbase has introduced an improve for the x402 protocol, enabling usage-based pricing for agentic AI compute requests, which replaces the previous flat price mannequin.

In a publish on X on Thursday, Coinbase Developer Platform introduced the “Upto” scheme has gone reside, including it is going to assist open up “variable-cost providers” for agentic AI corresponding to giant language mannequin inference, compute and knowledge queries.

“Till now, x402 solely supported precise, fixed-price funds. That works nice for deterministic APIs. But it surely blocked a complete class of providers the place the fee relies on utilization, corresponding to token depend, compute time, or question complexity,” Coinbase Developer Platform mentioned.

“Upto is an EVM implementation, supporting all ERC20s, and CDP Facilitator helps absolutely gasless funds,” it added.

The transfer comes amid growing support for the x402 protocol as a variety of companies prepare for future agentic commerce adoption, which is anticipated to carry extreme levels of network demand and require frictionless funds and near-instant transactions to help agentic AI.

Flat-fee drawback will get a repair

The Upto scheme permits sellers to configure most costs, whereas consumers will be capable of authorize costs as much as a certain amount. 

On the server finish, the place prices fluctuate, the server will cost solely for how a lot it truly takes to finish the duty, which means customers will not be overcharged and should even pay lower than the required most worth.

Beforehand, easy and complicated requests price the identical quantity, leading to some customers both overpaying or underpaying for duties achieved by AI brokers. This improve will assist customers set costs they’re prepared to pay earlier than a process as a substitute of guessing how a lot they assume the duty will price for an agent to finish.

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Developed by Coinbase, the protocol’s possession was handed over to the nonprofit Linux Basis earlier this month, with huge tech companies corresponding to Google, Microsoft and Amazon Internet Providers having a stake within the protocol via the x402 Foundation.

Regardless of the hype surrounding x402, the community has seen declining adoption charges in 2026 after hitting peak ranges in November, according to Dune Analytics knowledge. Between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10, the protocol noticed 13.7 million transactions, its greatest week on file.

Nevertheless, it has been on a steep decline since then, with weekly transaction quantity dropping beneath 1 million in early January and persevering with to plunge additional over the primary quarter. As of the final week in March, x402 noticed simply 112,708 transactions.

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