The volume has doubled, and the multi-chain layout is accelerating. Why hasn't the x402 protocol been a flash in the pan?

Original author: Blockbeats

Reprint: White55, Mars Finance

Since the x402 protocol ignited market enthusiasm due to the explosive popularity of meme coin $PING , nearly a week has passed. So far, the majority of market opinions are positive, with an optimistic outlook on the future development of the x402 protocol and detailed discussions on various projects. However, there are also some voices suggesting that the rapid rise of x402 may not be able to sustain the overheated market expectations in the short term, leading to a lack of follow-through.

So, what changes have occurred in the x402 protocol ecosystem over the past week? After reviewing and analyzing the changes in the x402 ecosystem over almost a week, we can provide an answer to the content of the article title.

Market enthusiasm remains high and continues to be hot.

Regardless of how the market views the rapid surge of $PING , it has indeed opened up the awareness of the x402 protocol among players in the community. Before the surge of $PING , data from the x402 ecosystem for the past 30 days showed that the minting interface of $PING received over 150,000 x402 transactions, amounting to approximately $140,000, drastically leading the second place, which had only 24,800 transactions and an amount of less than $1,400 for Questflow.

However, today, the data from just 24 hours has already far exceeded the data from the past 30 days. In the past 24 hours, the top 10 services in terms of interaction activity have received approximately 280,000 transactions, which is double the data from the previous 30 days. Meanwhile, the amount reached approximately $246,000, which is also double the data from the previous 30 days.

It can be said that the x402 protocol is by no means a flash in the pan and is still favored by the market.

The hype has shifted from memes to applications.

As the first meme coin born from the x402 protocol, $PING was once compared by many players to the first token of the former BRC-20 protocol, $PING , during its most FOMO phase. However, after briefly breaking through a market value of 80 million USD, $ORDI has not been able to continue its rapid ascent and has currently retraced to a market value of about 29 million USD.

The driving force of meme coins relies on market sentiment. After the tweet from OKX CEO Star with the screenshot of $PING appeared, there was a lack of tweets that could better drive market sentiment in the short term, and the pullback of $PING was also expected.

The key difference from inscription asset protocols like BRC-20 is that the x402 protocol itself is primarily a payment + AI Agent protocol. Therefore, players' enthusiasm and funds have not withdrawn from the x402 protocol, but have instead shifted to applications related to the x402 protocol ecosystem.

$PING has taken the initiative and become the new leader of the x402 protocol. Yesterday, the market cap of $PAYAI briefly exceeded 76 million USD, marking an increase of about 12 times since October 24. Currently, the coin has experienced a pullback, with a market cap of approximately 53 million USD.

This is mainly attributed to two aspects, the most significant reason being that Payai is currently the second largest Facilitator in the ecosystem after the official Coinbase (x402 protocol chain verification and settlement service provider):

Currently, PayAI has processed over 14% of x402 transactions, making it the largest facilitator in terms of the number of transactions processed, aside from Coinbase.

Additionally, Payai founder Notorious is ranked 7th among contributors on the official x402 protocol GitHub, which players interpret as “the project has a relatively close connection with the x402 protocol.”

Tokens related to ecosystems such as $dreams and $PAYAI have experienced significant increases. For a deeper understanding of these ecosystem-related projects, you can refer to the article “What is the x402 protocol, the 30 times big gold dog like inscriptions?” on Rhythm BlockBeats from last week.

In fact, some projects that only mentioned plans to do x402-related projects, such as Karum and Praxis, have experienced a sudden surge in recent days. Currently, these projects have seen significant pullbacks after the short-term emotional hype has dissipated, and it is important to be aware of the risks brought by FOMO.

Cross-chain Layout x402 Track

The popularity of the x402 protocol has not only attracted players but also garnered the attention of multiple blockchains. As an open protocol that is designed to inherently support multiple chains, Coinbase's own Base chain, being the “home base,” goes without saying, while the development of x402 on Solana and BNB is also worthy of our attention.

Yesterday, Solana founder toly tweeted, “x402 is very cool.”

This tweet led to the $SANTA meme coin on Trend.fun briefly surpassing a market value of 4 million dollars. The founder of Trends.fun, mable, later posted on the social platform X proposing to hold the “x402 Solana Hackathon” event to find good AI payment projects. This received support from Jacob Creech, the head of the Solana global developer ecosystem.

Tokens such as $PAYAI and $x402 , which have performed well in the market, are all on Solana, and currently, Solana has a certain advantage.

The official BNB chain Twitter also tweeted yesterday to promote 4 x402 protocol-related projects on the BNB chain, which are Unibase, pieverse, AEON.xyz, and TermiX AI.

Felix Fan, the head of the OKX Web3 wallet mobile team, tweeted yesterday that he received support from Bob Xu, a core contributor of the x402 protocol, to explore permissionless trading between AI Agents on the X Layer.

Compared to the early days of Bitcoin's ecosystem when it was ignored, the x402 protocol has gained significant attention across multiple chains this time, and I believe its development will be even faster.

Conclusion

After analyzing the changes that occurred in the x402 ecosystem over the past week, we can answer the question posed in the article's title.

First of all, the main reason for the sustained popularity of x402, I believe, is Coinbase's background. The biggest challenge that this protocol needs to overcome for long-term development is to first get merchants “on board,” and then to get users to “adopt” it. Since this is a protocol developed by Coinbase itself and has formed a foundation in partnership with CloudFare, it theoretically has sufficient resources to promote large-scale adoption.

This is also why the x402 protocol, despite having some similar competitors such as bitGPT's h402 and Radius's EVMAuth, has not seen a frenzy of new asset issuance like the BRC-20 with a bunch of BRC-XXX new protocols being crazily minted - the Coinbase brand itself is a speculative driving force for players.

Secondly, compared to the early BRC-20 which had no narrative to support the issuance of new meme coins other than a single repetition, the meme coin x402 is essentially a “bonus on top of the cake.” Players have a number of application targets to choose from in addition to meme coins, and these targets align with the narrative of the protocol itself. Although there may be doubts about the immaturity of these applications, it doesn't matter to the players. As long as there is room for funds to move within the narrative, they won’t all rush in at once and then all rush out at once.

It has been quite a long time since I've seen a fresh narrative like the x402 protocol that has generated high enthusiasm among players in the crypto space, project parties, and even ecosystem participants. Not only have meme coins been extremely popular, but application coins have also returned to the attention of players, which is a good start.

However optimistic people may be about the prospects of the x402 ecosystem, everyone should still be aware of the investment risks during periods of excessive enthusiasm.