According to Chainalysis, AI agents conducted over 138 million transactions via the x402 protocol on Base in Q3 2026, compared to just 58,800 a year earlier. The x402 protocol, launched by Coinbase in May 2025, enables fractional-cent payments in USDC between agents and services, amounts too small for traditional card networks to process economically. 88.1% of inference payments originate from US wallets, and over 87% of transactions fall between 0.01 cent and 10 cents. The median time between a wallet’s first deposit and first spend dropped from 73 days at the end of 2025 to 18 minutes in Q3 2026. Circle reported 73.3 billion dollars in USDC in circulation by end of September, up 19% year-over-year.
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