The ‘advertisement revenue model’, which has supported the Internet industry for about 30 years since the late 1990s, is at a critical crossroads. AI agents based on Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT and Gemini have begun to explore the web and handle tasks on behalf of humans. The emergence of AI, which is “not distracted by advertisements,” has led to a sharp drop in traffic, and now the IT industry is rushing to shift to a new economic paradigm called “Open Agent Commerce.” This year, traffic from major technical information sites and communities has plummeted by 60 to 75% since the launch of GPT-4.
Sam Ragsdale of a16z Crypto said in a contribution on the 22nd (local time), “The 402 code, which failed 28 years ago, has finally become feasible as blockchain-based stablecoins have solved the fee problem of ultra-small payments.” Machine-to-machine payment (M2M) ecosystem led by Coinbase and Street Dashboard screen of x402 protocol supported by Coinbase. The market leaders are Coinbase-led “x402” and Machine Payments Protocol (mpp) led by Stripe and Tempo. These are open protocols that allow AI agents to purchase data and pay for cloud hosting without human intervention.
The actual ecosystem is expanding rapidly. According to on-chain data, the x402 ecosystem has about 52,400 transactions and a volume of more than $95,000 as of the last 24 hours. MPP also has 866 AI agents communicating with 370 servers and performing more than 37,000 payments a day. Things that used to require B2B alliances or complex contracts are now being dealt with immediately only with AI agents’ “wallet balance” and “open protocols.” AgentCash, which appeared to solve this problem, is an integrated wallet service exclusively for AI agents.
With agent cache, AI can freely access numerous APIs on the Internet, pay just a few cents, and solve blocked tasks on its own. If the closed payment system trapped inside ChatGPT is the same as “AOL” or “Cheonryan” in the past, open agent commerce is like the advent of the “HTTP Web” that anyone can participate in. As AI, which is not controlled by a specific platform, changes its supply chain in search of the optimal unit price, writes its own programs, and pays for services, the digital economy’s perception of $10 trillion has already begun.
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