AI Agents: 138 Million Payments via x402 on Base in One Year According to Chainalysis

Robots paying robots. AI agents processed over 138 million transactions via the x402 protocol on Base in the third quarter of 2026. A year earlier, the count stood at 58,800. Chainalysis publishes these figures in the North American section of its annual report on crypto adoption. The same firm had counted 100 million payments in June.

And the bulk of the bill is American. Of the inference payments that Chainalysis can geolocate, 88.1% come from U.S. wallets.
Key points of this article:

• AI agents conducted over 138 million transactions via the x402 protocol on Base in the third quarter of 2026, marking a surge compared to the previous year's figures.
• The United States dominates payments for AI model inference, while China focuses on code auditing, illustrating a nationalism of AI in the distribution of geolocated transactions.

x402 Payments of a Cent That Bank Cards Cannot Process

A brief reminder for those who missed the beginning. The x402 protocol, launched by Coinbase in May 2025, recycles the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" code that has been unused since the 1990s. An agent calls an API, and the server responds "pay first." The agent then sends a few cents in USDC on Base and receives its response. No account or subscription is needed.

The amounts explain why crypto has taken this place. Over 87% of payments are between a hundredth of a cent and ten cents. The most common range is from one to ten cents. "Transactions of less than a dollar make no economic sense for a credit card network," writes Chainalysis in its report. A stablecoin that settles for less than a cent does.

Wallet behavior has also changed in a year. At the end of 2025, there was a median of 73 days between the first deposit on an agent wallet and its first expenditure. This delay has dropped to 18 minutes in the third quarter of 2026. Two-thirds of wallets now spend within the hour following their funding, compared to 4% a year earlier. And 89.3% are reloaded within 30 days. What they purchase are other agents: model inference, tool catalogs, data and research APIs, code auditing. "Robots buy knowledge generated by AI on the blockchain," summarizes the report.

American AI Agents Pay for Models and Chinese for Code Auditing

The United States accounts for 30% of all geolocated agent-to-service transactions tracked by Chainalysis. No other country performs better. But the distribution by category is much more telling. American wallets handle 88.1% of AI model inference, 41.8% of payments to agent frameworks and tool catalogs, and 23.2% of data and research API purchases. In other words, the brain, hands, and raw materials of an agentic software are primarily paid for from the United States.

China plays an inverse role. Nine out of ten transactions in the "security and code analysis" category come from wallets linked to China. Almost all go to AgentLISA, a service that audits Solidity smart contracts with a language model. Chinese wallets also account for 46.7% of financial intelligence and 35% of payment rails, but 0.1% of inference. The explanation put forward by Chainalysis boils down to two words: AI nationalism. DeepSeek and Qwen are free in open weights, while ChatGPT and Claude charge per request. The visible market for intelligence purchased by machines thus concentrates where it costs something.

A Caveat on the Geolocation of AI Agents

These shares only pertain to geolocatable transactions. And Chainalysis does not specify what fraction of the total they represent. Hoolie Tejwani, who leads Coinbase Ventures, speaks of an "industry maturation" where "each agent becomes a new user of the blockchain." Circle, the issuer of USDC, describes a role-sharing. Human-triggered purchases go to cards, while stablecoins handle machine-to-machine payments that are too small for card economics.

The report also raises a question that troubles regulators. Payments that are too fast, too small, and too numerous cannot serve as a control point, writes Chainalysis. Responsibility must therefore fall back on whoever deployed and funded the agent, not on the agent itself. Cloudflare has already drawn the commercial conclusion. The group opened dedicated wallets for agents in August with a ceiling set by the owner. Circle reported $73.3 billion of USDC in circulation at the end of September, up 19% year-on-year. The on-chain volume reached $14.8 trillion in just one quarter.

This content is provided for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online promotions, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. The availability of WEEX services, products, and related events may vary by region. You are responsible for ensuring that your participation is in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations.