x402 V2 Released: As AI Agents Begin to Have "Credit Cards," Which Projects Will Be Revalued?

Chainfeeds Guide:

Still waters run deep, retracing the subtle threads of the 402 narrative.

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TechFlow by Deep Tide

Opinion:

TechFlow by Deep Tide: The initial goal of the x402 protocol was to enable AI to call APIs and automatically purchase data and services through crypto wallets, just like humans swipe cards, thereby reviving the dormant "402 payment code" in internet protocols. However, the V1 model required AI to sign on-chain and pay Gas for every inference or API call, making interactions extremely cumbersome—more like a technical demo than commercial-grade infrastructure. The biggest change introduced in V2 is the normalization of AI’s commercial behavior, with the key being the post-payment mechanism: AI can continuously call services, the system keeps accounts by session in the background, and settles everything at the end. This means AI is, for the first time, granted "credit," shifting from atomic transactions to a use-now-pay-later model. In financial terms, this is equivalent to establishing a credit line from service providers to AI. The narrative significance is huge—since there is default risk, there is a need for credit evaluation, guarantees, and credit ratings, thus laying the foundation for the credit layer of AgentFi. V2 also moves from the Base ecosystem to "default multichain," making Ethereum mainnet, L2, and Solana compatible through standardized HTTP header protocols; meanwhile, Hybrid Rails enables AI to pay with USDC, while service providers like AWS and Google Cloud can receive fiat, realizing true commercial adoption from Web3 to Web2. These upgrades elevate x402 from a local experiment to the VISA network of the AI economy. If x402 V2 becomes the Visa settlement layer of the AI economy, its upper ecosystem will revolve around three core protocol types: AI’s credit bureau and fulfillment layer, AI’s computing power and verifiers, and AI’s asset and execution layer. The first category centers on "credit," such as Spectral’s on-chain credit scoring MACRO, which can serve as a threshold for post-payment; its Inferchain is used to verify Agent behavior and results, closely tied to x402’s settlement logic. Bond Credit focuses on Agent credit lending, using TEE to monitor Agent behavior and provide guarantees for "use now, pay later," making it a very early but highly relevant track. CARV’s cross-chain identity system allows multichain Agents to have unified identities, making it a natural partner for x402’s multichain standard. The second category is utilities and verification layers: Akash (decentralized computing marketplace) benefits from low-friction streaming payments; Giza relies on ZKML as a verifier to ensure AI inference is genuinely executed before triggering payment. The third category is the production and execution layer for Agents: Virtuals Protocol provides an Agent issuance platform, with x402 granting its Agents cross-chain capabilities; Brahma can use x402 for unified payments for various Keeper or strategy executions, enabling automated DeFi Agents. Overall, V2 transforms these projects from functional tools into infrastructure nodes, shifting investment value from narrative to structural storytelling.Technically, x402 is a payment protocol, but in the crypto context, it opens the door to the financialization of AI. Post-payment, multichain accounts, and fiat channels give AI, for the first time, a structure of assets and liabilities: it can incur liabilities by using services first, or hold assets across chains to form equity, thus transforming Agents from mere code into independent economic entities. This is the origin of AgentFi. In the future, the focus of AI investment will shift from who is smarter (model layer) to who is wealthier (financial layer)—that is, who can better manage credit, assets, payments, and computing power. x402 V2 is the starting gun; once the market warms up, there will be a revaluation in three directions: those giving AI identities (identity and data layer, such as CARV), those providing credit evaluation and guarantees for AI (credit layer, such as Spectral, Bond Credit), and those abstracting computing power into retail goods that AI can purchase with streaming payments (DePIN and verification layer, such as Akash, Giza). These tracks have strong narratives, promising visions, and are hard to falsify—making them the most likely to be catalyzed by capital in a new narrative cycle. The significance of V2 is not in saving Gas, but in giving AI’s economic activities a financial structure, thus laying the foundation for the future AI capital market.