The payment layer for the Machine Web

Let AI agents
pay each other

x402 turns every API into a monetizable endpoint for the machine web. No subscriptions. No API-key portals. Just an HTTP challenge, a cryptographic proof, and settlement-ready receipts executed at the edge.

ESIGN Compliant UETA Compliant SEC 17a-4 Aligned x402 Protocol Ed25519 Signing IPFS Anchored
49+
Core Modules
6
Security Layers
7
Audit Ledgers
3
Anchor Chains
0
Exposed Ports

What is x402?

A protocol that lets any HTTP endpoint charge for access — and any client (human or AI) pay instantly without signing up.

Agent-Native

Built for a world where AI agents call APIs on behalf of users. No browser needed. No OAuth dance. The agent reads the 402 response, signs a proof, and retries — all autonomously.

Edge-First Speed

The Gateway runs on Cloudflare Workers — the same network that powers 20% of the web. Proof verification happens at the edge. No database round-trip blocks the response.

True Micro-Payments

Stripe charges 30¢ per transaction. x402 charges nothing. Proofs are cryptographic, settlements are batched on-chain asynchronously. Charge a fraction of a cent profitably.

The x402 Flow

Request. Challenge. Prove. Fulfill. Four steps. Zero friction.

1

The Request

An AI agent (or any HTTP client) hits a paid endpoint. It doesn't need to know the price ahead of time. The Gateway intercepts the request before it reaches the origin.

// AI agent makes a normal request
GET /api/v1/market-signal/btc
Host: api.fth.trading
User-Agent: TradingBot/2.0
2

The 402 Challenge

No proof? The Gateway returns 402 Payment Required with a machine-readable invoice: the asset, the amount, and a unique nonce. The agent parses this instantly.

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required X-PAYMENT-REQUIRED: true
{
  "version": "fth-x402/2.0",
  "asset": "USDF",
  "amount": "0.25",
  "invoice_id": "inv_8y3GkP",
  "nonce": "n_z4zcz",
  "facilitator_url": "https://..."
}
3

Cryptographic Proof

The agent signs the invoice using its Ed25519 private key — creating a prepaid credit deduction or a state channel update. No external API call. No wallet popup. It's one function call.

// Agent SDK — 3 lines
import { sign402 } from 'fth-x402-sdk'

const proof = sign402(invoice, myKey)
// → "prepaid_credit;sig=DslL...;wallet=uny1_..."
4

Instant Fulfillment

The agent retries with the proof header. The edge verifies the signature cryptographically, deducts the balance asynchronously, and streams the response to the agent. The whole loop takes milliseconds.

GET /api/v1/market-signal/btc
X-Payment-Proof: prepaid_credit;sig="DslL..."

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Receipt-Id: rcpt_9PcHDn2
{ "signal": "bullish", "confidence": 0.92 }

AI-to-AI Use Cases

Every scenario below is possible today. x402 is the missing financial plumbing that lets autonomous agents transact without human gatekeepers.

LLM Orchestration Chains

A master agent coordinates specialist models. It sends a prompt to a code-generation agent, pays per token, then routes the output to a security-audit agent for analysis — each call settled independently via 402.

Agent A → Agent B → Agent C — each paid per-call

Real-Time Market Intelligence

A trading bot needs live sentiment analysis. It hits a market-signal API that costs a fraction of a cent per call. The bot opens a state channel, streams hundreds of requests per second, and settles the total later.

State channels — thousands of micro-payments, one settlement

Data Marketplace

An ML training pipeline needs fresh labeled data. It discovers a data-provider API, pays per row returned, and ingests it directly into the training loop. No contract negotiation. No sales call. The 402 header is the price tag.

Autonomous data procurement — pay per row

Generative Content Pipelines

A content agent composes a blog post, then calls a image generation API to create illustrations and a voice synthesis API for the audio version. Each API charges independently. The agent's wallet handles all three payments in sequence.

Multi-vendor pipelines — one wallet, many APIs

Security & Compliance Agents

A CI/CD pipeline agent submits code diffs to a vulnerability scanner API and a license-compliance checker. Each scan costs micro-cents. 402 ensures every scan is paid for without monthly billing surprises.

Pay-per-scan DevSecOps — exact cost per commit

Federated Agent Swarms

A coordinating agent dispatches tasks to a swarm of specialist agents across different providers. Each specialist exposes an x402 endpoint. The coordinator pays each one individually — no centralized billing, no pre-negotiation.

Decentralized agent economy — zero coordination overhead
Operated by Kevan Burns — UnyKorn Sovereign Web3

Genesis402 Web3 AI Task Center

Real tasks. Real money movement. All through x402. The "AI in the beginning" now performs actual work: Genesis sims, wallet ops, RWA screens, self-repair, sovereign reasoning. Pay via x402 (test mode local). Kevan Burns sovereign wallets + full send/receive.

Real AI Tasks (x402 Paid)

Select task → Pay with x402 (uses live 4020 descriptor + test) → Execute real computation / action. Results + receipt returned.

LIVE on 3101 + 4020
x402 Payment Flow (real)
Click a task above. This will fetch a real 402 descriptor from 4020, show instructions (or use ?test=true), then execute the real task on the sovereign task server.
Task Result + Receipt

Kevan Burns Sovereign Web3 Wallets — Money via x402

All send/receive/ops through x402 rails or direct L1 bridges. Ed25519 everywhere. No rented economics.

Known Sovereign Addresses
XRPL Treasury: rsJ3PGGDH4vPpedjfVRe9YKTCf9BWu6TDC
Stellar: GBJF54FBYPBVHR6Z3OKWWEMPF6QYPNH3RZZYX3E4V7AUMUWIEV7Z3DPX
EVM: 0x7d9a65d06dcc435a52D5880C6310Bd6E96c156DB
USDF Issuer: GBYLA6VHX4UWIFEEC2KAOJK57RUKIR2CKO7TGVRDWMG2A3B2W4ZHJEPI
Apostle 7332 (ATP native, Ed25519): sovereign local (registry + 7331 wallet)
x402 Money Movement
Use the task runner above or the live gateway at :4020. "Receive" by generating invoice (see /api/chain descriptor). "Send" settles on Apostle or bridged rails with proof.
Current x402 health: checking...

High-Level Self-Repairing Mechanisms

Guardian layer: continuous health, auto-diagnosis, repair actions, anchored logs. Runs via the task server + this hub. Highest level ops for the sovereign stack.

Integration Agent

Guides developers through gateway routing, SDK retry behavior, proof headers, and the fastest path to production.

Monetization Agent

Explains pricing models, prepaid credit, state channels, metering, receipts, and how to monetize AI endpoints profitably.

Compliance Agent

Answers questions on auditability, evidence bundles, cryptographic proof, ESIGN posture, and regulated workflow alignment.

Live Sovereign Guidance (now real)

Genesis402 Concierge + Task Runner

Use the task buttons above for real execution (Genesis sim, wallets, RWA, self-repair, reasoning). All money and actions flow through x402. Results include cryptographic receipts and on-stack proof.

Why This Wins

Every competitor forces agents through human-designed billing funnels. x402 is the only protocol purpose-built for machine-to-machine commerce.

Traditional API Billing

  • Requires human sign-up and credit card
  • Minimum charges make micro-calls unprofitable
  • API keys are static and leak easily
  • Billing is monthly — opaque until the invoice
  • Cross-vendor payments require separate accounts

x402 Protocol

  • Agent-native: keypair is the identity + wallet
  • Zero processing fees — charge $0.001 profitably
  • Proofs are per-request, cryptographically bound
  • Real-time balance — agents know exactly what they spend
  • One wallet pays every x402 API on the network

First-Mover Protocol

HTTP 402 has existed since 1997 but nobody implemented it for real. x402 is the first production-grade protocol to activate the status code at scale.

Network Effect Moat

Every new API provider that adopts x402 makes every existing agent wallet more valuable. The protocol is the lock-in — not the vendor.

Drop-In Integration

Add x402 to any existing API with a single Cloudflare Worker. No backend changes. No new auth system. Your existing API just gains a monetization layer.

Named Agent Systems

These are the first live-ready AI transaction lanes built on the UnyKorn-first x402 stack. Each system can issue invoices, retry with proof, surface receipts, and feed operator visibility.

Atlas Broker

Market agent

Requests premium market inference, pays per provider lane, and clears the unlock through /api/v1/agent/pay-api/atlas.

Payment lane: invoice → tx hash proof → receipt

Sentinel Audit

Compliance agent

Runs evidence checks, maps receipt metadata to control narratives, and watches anchored batches for audit export readiness.

Explorer feeds: receipts, anchoring, invoice failures

Genesis Trader

Trade verification

Monetizes trade attestation and replay-safe verification through /api/v1/trade/verify/:trade_id.

Proof lane: verified trade response with receipt header

Aurora Studio

Content pipeline

Coordinates text, image, and voice services across paid endpoints while the treasury funds the next task automatically.

Burst mode: repeatable micro-transactions in seconds

Vector Swarm

Federated specialists

Dispatches specialist agents across multiple paid routes and rolls the outcome back into a shared operator dashboard view.

Multi-agent mesh with route-level metering

MoltMesh

Molt-style orchestrator

A Molt-style coordinator lane for chained AI calls. No dedicated Moltbot package was found in-repo, so this stack surfaces an orchestration-ready payment lane instead.

Coordinator path: /api/v1/agent/pay-api/moltmesh
Explorer Surfaces

Where the explorer lives

Public site
x402.unykorn.org is the main protocol site and entry point for the named systems.
Operator explorer
/explorer.html maps invoice, receipt, anchoring, and L1 health surfaces in one place.
Chain explorer
explorer.unykorn.org remains the canonical transaction and address explorer for settlement proofs.
Operator API map
  • /admin/invoices — monitor challenge issuance and invoice status
  • /admin/receipts — inspect successful payment receipts
  • /admin/anchoring — review batch anchoring state
  • /l1/health — verify UnyKorn rail health
  • /l1/batches — inspect anchored receipt batches
Stack test lane

Use the built-in load runner to push named agent routes for seconds or minutes and measure how many challenge loops the stack clears.

npm run x402:load:agents -- --duration 60 --concurrency 24

Build With x402

Whether you're an API provider or an agent developer, integration takes minutes.

API Providers

Monetize your endpoint in one config file.

# wrangler.toml — route config
[[routes]]
pattern = "/api/v1/signal/*"
price = "0.25"
asset = "USDF"
namespace = "genesis"

# That's it. Deploy and earn.
$ ./scripts/x402-deploy-gateway.sh
$ npm run x402:load:agents -- --duration 15 --concurrency 12

Agent Developers

Teach your agent to pay with 5 lines.

import { X402Client } from 'fth-x402-sdk'

const client = new X402Client(myKey)

// Handles 402→sign→retry automatically
const data = await client.fetch(
'https://api.fth.trading/api/v1/signal/btc'
)

// data = { signal: "bullish", ... }

Architecture

AI Agent
Edge Gateway
Facilitator
UnyKorn L1

Gateway verifies proofs at the edge. Facilitator manages balances & receipts. L1 anchors finality.

The future is agents paying agents

Every API becomes a revenue stream. Every agent becomes a customer. x402 connects them with nothing but HTTP.