x402 protocol is enabling the network to skip ads and enter the micropayment era

Blockchain technology makes micropayment possible, and x402 will change the internet economic model from advertising to small payments, preparing for the era of agent-based networks. This article is based on a piece by @_0xarayan, organized, translated, and written by TechFlow. (Background: Decoding 'x402': Reconstructing Payment Trust in the AI Era, the Holy Grail to the Next Generation of Machine Civilization) (Background Supplement: What is the x402 protocol? How it will ignite the internet payment revolution in the AI agent era) For decades, online advertising has been the only way for the internet to survive. Everyone is competing for attention. To achieve this goal, companies collect all possible data related to users, create user profiles, and show advertisements to users. The agent-based network and original sin In the internet, this single model has opened up a market worth trillions of dollars today. Finance has always existed on the internet: collaborating with payment service providers to set up paywalls limiting website access or displaying ads. However, micropayments (less than $1) have always been economically unfeasible (Visa/Mastercard charges about 2% + $0.10 per transaction), making advertising the only model: users can access massive content for free, advertisers can target user groups accurately to promote products, and content publishers can profit from their content. This is a win-win for everyone. As the world gradually moves towards the agent-based era: agents begin to replace humans as content consumers and gradually become the middle layer. Advertisers will no longer be able to directly target humans for ad placements, and the advertising economy will face collapse. Agents either grab content or purchase content directly. APIs will become the default communication mode rather than interacting through browsers or agent browsers. User Path Grabbing or stealing content is economically unfeasible for the internet, so content publishers will turn to charge micropayments for their websites, and agents will need a way to pay these fees. For decades, micropayments have been unachievable until the emergence of blockchain. Blockchains like @Solana make large-scale micropayments possible while avoiding user exploitation. x402 is a unified interface built on the 402 standard, enabling: consumers to pay for content fees and publishers to receive content fees without intermediaries (like Visa or Mastercard), thus making agent-based micropayments a reality. Source: payai.network When any client (agent/browser) sends a request to access content, the content host will respond and request payment for the content fee, and the client will gain access to the content after completing the payment, thus opening a new economy for agent-based networks. Use Cases I'm Excited About Gas-free User Experience: I believe an underexplored area is how x402 allows users to achieve a gas-free experience for transactions on any network, where users only need to have assets in their wallets to complete transactions. x402 Browser: Someone should fork Chromium directly and integrate x402 into the browser. @Brave should actually do this; they have good user recognition in the encryption field, already have wallet capabilities, and support IPFS by default. In my view, they are the team most likely to achieve this. On-chain Marketplace: There are exploration issues in traditional markets, and @CoinbaseDev addressed this by introducing bazaars (the Hindi term for 'market'), but these are centralized marketplaces that will always have certain limitations. Someone should create an on-chain directory that allows anyone to add the content they are selling (API/newsletters/books, etc.) and embed a rating mechanism in the directory, just like OpenRouter rates models. Skipping Ads: Like any technology, the world needs time to adapt to x402. In the meantime, ads can be skipped through micropayments, which will be a natural development direction for x402. Users can set daily preference spending limits, and when accessing YouTube, the x402 browser will automatically skip ads and pay the advertisers. I am always amazed at how simple technologies unlock new economies, and x402 is one of them. If you are developing in this field, whether as a seller or buyer, feel free to contact me. We are building something for you. Related Reports How the x402 protocol launched by Coinbase and Cloudflare is reshaping the internet payment revolution? How RWA lands in traditional enterprises? Three paths fully unpacked: Equity Confirmation, payment, and financing. Slash Vision Labs COO: Encryption payments can help businesses manage idle funds effectively. This article was first published in BlockTempo, the most influential blockchain news media.