Agent to Agent Payments Protocol Report

Executive Summary

x402 (Coinbase) and h402 (BitGPT) are new payment protocols that work by implementing the long-ignored HTTP 402 Payment Required status code. Their shared insight is that payment can be treated as a standard HTTP concern, enabling the next generation of autonomous, metered, accurate commerce over the public Internet. 

When a user (or agent) requests a monetized online resource, the server, instead of immediately granting access or showing a typical paywall, can reply with this 402 code. This response includes a JSON descriptor detailing the acceptable cryptocurrencies (like specific stablecoins, which aim for price stability), t

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From an engineering perspective, this has the potential to be huge. Not only from the agent perspective, but if wallets implement support it can greatly simplify content gating and allow it to proliferate and be a lower touch user experience.