x402 protocol's daily average trading volume is only $28,000, with about half of the transactions being wash trading activities.

Gate News reports that on March 11, supported by a certain CEX and other entities, the AI payment protocol x402 aims to enable automatic payments between AI agents and software by embedding small stablecoin transactions into the internet communication layer. Although the narrative around the “agent economy” continues to grow, on-chain data shows that the protocol is still in the testing phase. Artemis analysis indicates that x402 currently processes only about $28,000 worth of transactions daily, with an average payment of approximately $0.20. About half of these transactions are “self-transactions” or “wash trades” and other artificially inflated activities, rather than genuine commercial transactions. Although there was a peak of 3.8 million transactions totaling around $2 million in a single day in February, this was mainly due to infrastructure testing and experimental use. The entire ecosystem is valued at approximately $7 billion, most of which comes from Chainlink’s LINK token, not pure x402 assets. Supporters believe that x402 aims to address the challenge of small, high-frequency machine-to-machine payments that traditional payment systems struggle with, but real commercial applications will still take time to develop. Analysts suggest that the development speed of the agent economy may be overestimated in the next year, but its potential could be underestimated five years from now.