Coinbase Unveils Payment Technology for AI Agents

Coinbase has introduced the x402 tool for online payments. It is designed for transferring stablecoins via standard internet protocols, enabling AI agents to conduct autonomous transactions.

x402 is fixing the internet’s first mistake.

Onchain payments are now easy and frictionless, opening new use cases for agentic commerce for API providers, context retrieval protocols, content creators, and more. pic.twitter.com/iC1edIOALU

— Coinbase Developer Platform?️ (@CoinbaseDev) May 6, 2025

“Onchain payments have become simple and seamless, opening new opportunities for agentic commerce for API providers, context retrieval protocols, content creators, and more,” the company stated.

The solution is built on the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the protocol through which web browsers exchange data with web servers.

“HTTP 402 ‘Payment Required’ has been part of the internet’s blueprint for decades but has never been used. x402 turns this 402 status code into a real payment layer: any server can request payment, and a client (human or agent) can respond with digital dollars, i.e., stablecoins like USDC,” the exchange added.

It noted that today, providing agents with access to external context and APIs is a complex process with many manual settings. They do not allow bots to autonomously access external services.

Meanwhile, agents with access to external APIs, context, and tools outperform models that can only rely on internal data and web search.

x402 eliminates a key bottleneck on the path to agent autonomy. Now they can pay for API calls without human intervention. The solution also opens up opportunities for content creators to monetize their activities, Coinbase emphasized.

“Content creators, you can now monetize your content as a contextual model without the need for a subscription or minimum credit card payment, enjoying virtually zero fees and nearly instant payments,” the exchange added.

Coinbase is launching the new protocol in partnership with Amazon Web Services, Circle, Anthropic, and Near Protocol.

Providing AI agents with access to crypto payments is a promising new solution that experts have been discussing recently, though there are risks to security and fund safety.

ElizaOS AI Agents Pose Risks

Researchers from Princeton University and Sentient Foundation discovered a vulnerability in AI agents built on ElizaOS technology, which manage millions of dollars. The issue involves memory manipulation, allowing unauthorized fund transfers to malicious actors.

“Eliza has memory, and we attempted to introduce false memories through someone else injecting on another platform,” noted Princeton graduate student Atharv Patlan.

AI agents that rely on social media sentiment are particularly vulnerable to manipulation, the study says.

Malicious actors can use fake accounts and coordinated messages to deceive AI into making trading decisions.

“An attacker can execute a Sybil attack by creating multiple fake accounts on platforms like X or Discord to manipulate market sentiment. By organizing coordinated posts that falsely inflate the perceived value of a token, the attacker can deceive agents into buying the ‘pumped’ token at an artificially high price, then sell their assets and crash the value,” the study states.

Memory injection is an attack where malicious data is inserted into an AI agent’s memory, causing it to recall and use false information.

The research findings have been forwarded to Eliza Labs.

ElizaOS is a framework for running AI agents. It was introduced by Eliza Labs in October 2024, initially under the name ai16z, but was later renamed.

Researchers from Princeton University, in collaboration with Sentient Foundation, developed the CrAIBench benchmark, which measures AI agents’ resilience to context manipulation.

Previously, Aptos Labs CEO Avery Ching stated that AI agents need access to blockchain assets—cryptocurrencies, tokens, and tokenized instruments like real estate.

In May, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced the launch of Tether AI—a personal artificial intelligence accessible to everyone.