Coinbase Institute paper details x402 agent payments

On October 8, 2026, the Coinbase Institute released a paper using x402 to illustrate machine-to-machine payments: an agent receives an HTTP 402 with the price, signs a 0.01 USDC EIP-3009 payment on Base, and a facilitator settles in about two seconds for under $0.001. The flow verifies that a payment is valid, but not that it should have happened.

• A 0.01 USDC EIP-3009 payment on Base settles in about 2 seconds
• Facilitator fee is under $0.001 per transaction
• The flow has five steps: request, respond-402, authorize, settle, serve
• It verifies payment validity, not whether the spend was warranted