The payments protocol x402, designed for AI agents, has experienced rapid growth over the past year. According to an Oct. 14 report by Chainalysis, 138.5 million payments were made on Base using x402, a significant increase from just 58,800 transactions in Q3 2025. Most of these transactions are small, with over 87% valued between $0.0001 and $0.10, making them impractical for traditional payment networks like Visa and Mastercard due to high processing fees and chargeback risks.
While x402 supports multiple blockchains, the majority of AI agent payment volume settles on Base, Solana, or Polygon. Solana stands out as the only blockchain among these with an investable crypto token. It is also well-suited for AI agent payments due to its speed, low transaction fees, and large stablecoin supply. Solana's recent Alpenglow upgrade aims to achieve transaction finality times of 150 milliseconds, further enhancing its appeal.
Solana has also introduced batch settlement for x402 through PayAI Network and BlockRunAI, which allows AI agents to bundle multiple transactions into a single on-chain settlement. This innovation saves over $20,000 a month in fees and reduces latency by 10 times. Despite the growth in transaction counts, the economic activity from these payments remains limited, with only $25.6 million deemed plausible after removing suspicious activity.
As of October 2026, Solana is trading about 64% below its all-time high of $293, set in January 2025. While the blockchain is building infrastructure to position itself for future growth in AI agent payments, it is not yet generating significant revenue from these transactions. The stablecoin supply on Solana hit a record $17.3 billion in September, with daily active stablecoin addresses increasing by 269% from the previous year.