Lightning Labs introduced pi402 on November 12, an open-source technology that enables artificial intelligence coding agents to pay directly in BTC for the computing services they require. The protocol combines Bitcoin’s Lightning Network with the L402 payment authentication standard, allowing agents to receive an invoice, complete the purchase and immediately access the requested resources without human intervention. Pi402 also supports usage-based billing, including charging per token consumed, as well as per-request spending limits and daily budgets. Lightning Labs says this precision, down to the millisatoshi, could make the Lightning Network suitable for micropayments tied to AI agent activity. For now, pi402 remains a developer tool and does not demonstrate widespread commercial adoption.
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