I'm curious about the legal implications of this. For example:
- In the EU, a consumer has 14 days to withdraw from a contract that you have concluded online, unless the consumer explicitly waives this right during the purchase (so your payment required page will need an explicit statement about this).
- I'm pretty sure in the EU, and probably most countries, you must receive an invoice, even if it's for a 1 cent purchase.
- You might also have to pay VAT on these transactions, which will need to also be included in the invoice. This is especially important for B2B purchases, because companies can claim back VAT.
- What happens if I complete the purchase, but there is an error in the response returned by the website? I.e. between the events of my purchase being confirmed and the server returning the response, the server dies. What recourse do I have?
Quite apart from whether the concept can succeed after having failed a number of well-funded and well-publicised times—
I open https://shtein.me/api/joke in a normal-enough browser (Firefox Nightly with Enhanced Tracking Protection and uBlock Origin). After loading its 2.3MB response (no useful HTML, just a huge inlined JS blob, and served without transfer compression), it asks me to select a wallet. There are two choices.
I select “Injected” and press “Connect wallet” (ugh, why did it require me to click three times instead of just one!?). Nothing discernible happens. No errors or network activity in the dev tools.
So do/can users get a preview of the content before being required to make payment? Or is the idea that users are likely already familiar with the site/content to which they will pay? Sorry I only skimmed the article.
Is L402 an open standard? It doesn't appear to be.
X402 is an open standard backed by the Linux Foundation.
I'm honestly not the biggest fan of the Linux Foundation as a company, nor of many of the names behind X402 (e.g. Coinbase) but if I had to choose between these two standards for something I was implementing, I know which one I'd be less worried about vendor lock-in with.
> This literally can change how we use internet making advertisement economy internet runs on obsolete.
Hmm, so I will pay to see websites that have ads. This may or may not be fine and solve some other problems (like paywalling AI agents), but lets not be naive. It won't replace ads, in most cases it will just be another stream.
It took a ridiculous amount of effort, but it looks like we're starting to go somewhere with this. The complexity of crypto is, um, complex and very very not user friendly. I had money in my Phantom wallet, but that wouldn't connect. I suspect it's because my USDC was on the wrong network. So then I tried the Base wallet, from Coinbase. I couldn't send money from my Phantom wallet to my Base wallet for whatever reason, so finally I used Apple Pay to load $5 (the minimum) into my Base wallet, so that I could click the button, finally, to give you $0.01.
Except it still didn't work. When I used the mobile browser, I clicked the links and it looks like it wanted to take my money, but it returned to the site after going to base, without actually taking money. So then I used the Base app's browser to visit the site. It more convincingly tried to take money out of my wallet but the site returns Request failed: 402, which is confusing, and doesn't actually take my money.
You should give AgentCash [0] a spin. AgentCash is an x402 wallet + gateway for your agent. It can use any of the available paid APIs and even search them to find the right one for your task.
I think this adds too much friction to trying to view a website and most people, upon seeing this sort of paywalling (regardless of how much or how little is being asked) will just not go to a site that's implemented this.
It's really not meant for humans - the author here is mainly doing that for demonstrative purposes. x402 is meant for, and best for, AI agents with access to a little working capital and need to access a paywalled tool, API, or content to help solve a task.
Consumers that actually spend (Americans) pay with unsecured credit, crypto ecosystem doesn't have robust unsecured credit systems. It has plenty of secured credit systems though because it is extremely optimal at collecting collateral and settlement, extremely unoptimal at rendering judgements and seizing non-possessed assets. Many applications try unsecured lending and solve nothing or gain no traction, running out of capital to unsecurely lend. This renders x402 for consumer applications dead in the water.
And if consumer applications were unlocked, the law of diminishing returns comes into play immediately as everyone tries to paywall their service, just like seen on Medium and Substack.
x402 is for agents to pay for something they need access to. The agents themselves will be speculators just like the users.
I sure hope you're right though. To me x402 can subsidize the cost of producing and serving content with payments from the systems that are using it and giving the least back. It can mean more free content for humans with the right payment model.
- In the EU, a consumer has 14 days to withdraw from a contract that you have concluded online, unless the consumer explicitly waives this right during the purchase (so your payment required page will need an explicit statement about this).
- I'm pretty sure in the EU, and probably most countries, you must receive an invoice, even if it's for a 1 cent purchase.
- You might also have to pay VAT on these transactions, which will need to also be included in the invoice. This is especially important for B2B purchases, because companies can claim back VAT.
- What happens if I complete the purchase, but there is an error in the response returned by the website? I.e. between the events of my purchase being confirmed and the server returning the response, the server dies. What recourse do I have?
Happy to answer any questions!
[0] https://www.x402scan.com/
I open https://shtein.me/api/joke in a normal-enough browser (Firefox Nightly with Enhanced Tracking Protection and uBlock Origin). After loading its 2.3MB response (no useful HTML, just a huge inlined JS blob, and served without transfer compression), it asks me to select a wallet. There are two choices.
I select “Injected” and press “Connect wallet” (ugh, why did it require me to click three times instead of just one!?). Nothing discernible happens. No errors or network activity in the dev tools.
I select “Coinbase Wallet” and press “Connect wallet”. It opens a popup window, <https://keys.coinbase.com/connect?sdkName=%40coinbase%2Fwall...>. The TLS connection fails, PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR. Operating on a hunch, I discover it’s blocked in India:
(coinbase.com and www.coinbase.com are similarly affected.)Not sure quite what to make of that, given that https://www.coinbase.com/en-in/blog/coinbase-launches-in-ind... sounds (from the snippet exposed in a search engine) like Coinbase started fully operating in India five weeks ago.
Can’t say it leaves a positive impression.
The protocol: https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l40...
An index of current use: https://l402index.com/
X402 is an open standard backed by the Linux Foundation.
I'm honestly not the biggest fan of the Linux Foundation as a company, nor of many of the names behind X402 (e.g. Coinbase) but if I had to choose between these two standards for something I was implementing, I know which one I'd be less worried about vendor lock-in with.
Hmm, so I will pay to see websites that have ads. This may or may not be fine and solve some other problems (like paywalling AI agents), but lets not be naive. It won't replace ads, in most cases it will just be another stream.
So... yeah, technically it works but until anybody cares, it doesn't matter.
I didn't even re-installed my wallet for others to get some reward back last time I setup my browser.
Except it still didn't work. When I used the mobile browser, I clicked the links and it looks like it wanted to take my money, but it returned to the site after going to base, without actually taking money. So then I used the Base app's browser to visit the site. It more convincingly tried to take money out of my wallet but the site returns Request failed: 402, which is confusing, and doesn't actually take my money.
Tell your agent "Set up agentcash.dev and use it to get a joke from http://shtein.me/api/joke"
[0] https://agentcash.dev/
Consumers that actually spend (Americans) pay with unsecured credit, crypto ecosystem doesn't have robust unsecured credit systems. It has plenty of secured credit systems though because it is extremely optimal at collecting collateral and settlement, extremely unoptimal at rendering judgements and seizing non-possessed assets. Many applications try unsecured lending and solve nothing or gain no traction, running out of capital to unsecurely lend. This renders x402 for consumer applications dead in the water.
And if consumer applications were unlocked, the law of diminishing returns comes into play immediately as everyone tries to paywall their service, just like seen on Medium and Substack.
x402 is for agents to pay for something they need access to. The agents themselves will be speculators just like the users.
I'm fine being wrong.