Recently, the narrative shift of AI Agents has evolved from "help me write code" to "help me spend money."

I have always regarded x402 as a "thermometer": an infrastructural signal indicating whether the AI economy can form a real transaction closed loop. Essentially, this is a return to native internet micro-payments, not just an extension of a certain exchange's narrative.

December Timeline: From "Available" to "Standard Candidate"

December 11: x402 V2 officially launched
This marks a significant watershed. x402 has upgraded from an early payment patch to a payment layer supporting multiple chains, dynamic routing, and session reuse. The core significance is:
It significantly reduces the friction for Agents signing and settling across different chains and APIs, beginning to possess the engineering attributes of a "default payment layer."

December 18: Official involvement of Solana

@solana official account announced deep support for x402 and created the @x402 account. Considering that the typical features of Agent payments are high frequency and very small amounts, Solana’s advantages in cost and confirmation speed are beginning to translate into real adoption. Currently, Solana network accounts for over 50% of the transactions in the protocol, which is a signal of "usage" rather than promotional data.

December 19: Infrastructure-level integration with Google and Circle

Google Cloud announced AP2 and chose x402 as an extension for stablecoin payments; Circle further deepened USDC integration. On the same day, Lowe’s launched a commercial pilot based on this payment pathway.

The value of these actions is not in "platforms" but in default options; x402 is being embedded into existing cloud and enterprise workflows.

December 20: Total payment transactions exceed 100 million

Officially disclosed that since its launch in May 2025, the total number of processed payments has surpassed 100 million.
For a payment standard like x402, "call volume" is more important than TVL because it directly reflects whether it is being genuinely consumed by machines.

Why I believe $PAYAI has a chance to be re-rated to a 100M MC

Currently, $PAYAI ’s market cap is roughly in the $10M–$20M range.
Disclosure: I hold a small position in $PAYAI for personal research only; this is not investment advice.

I believe 100M (about 8–10x space) is a logically discussable re-rate range, mainly based on three points, not emotion:

1. Consensus Concentration
Within the Solana ecosystem, $PAYAI has become one of the main liquidity-bearing assets under the x402 narrative. Funds are seeking the "settlement entry" for the Agent economy. The structure of transaction volume / market cap ratio indicates it is being treated as a beta for this direction.

2. Pre-beneficiaries of Infrastructure Valuation Adjustment
The core value of x402 V2 lies in "reduced integration costs." If more call-based paid APIs / Agent services (e.g., cloud resources, data scraping, auditing services) default to integrating with x402 by early 2026, the assets first mapped by the market will usually see valuation uplift first.

3. Rationality of the Narrative Closed Loop
If the settlement layer of the machine economy ultimately targets a scale of billions or even hundreds of billions, then 100M is not an exaggerated valuation but a reasonable early beta imagination—provided that data continues to be used to justify adoption.
How I would verify whether this judgment still holds:

Once these three signals weaken, I will directly lower expectations for $PAYAI :

Actual integration count: How many paid APIs / Agent services have truly gone live with x402 payment walls (focusing on real deployment, not just announcements).
Session reuse success rate: Determines whether Agents can operate stably under high-frequency calls; it’s the lifeline of UX.
Facilitator openness: The settlement layer must move toward multi-party competition and routing marketization, rather than being dominated by a single platform.

Key time points to watch for additional marking:
January 16, 2026: Launch of ERC-8004 (Trustless Agents) mainnet

If x402 addresses "how Agents pay," ERC-8004 addresses "Agent identity and responsibility attribution."
When identity and payments are standardized simultaneously, Agents can evolve from scripting tools into entities with independent economic behavior.

Currently, x402 is very much like DeFi in early 2020:
It is still questioned for centralization and unclear pathways, but the permissionless, instant settlement experience is something traditional payment systems cannot provide.