A decades-old web standard is finding new life on Ethereum, potentially opening the door to a new era of AI-driven online commerce.
The Ethereum Foundation revealed on Wednesday that autonomous AI agents — self-operating programs capable of transacting without human oversight — can now leverage the long-overlooked HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status, first defined 30 years ago, through Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 3009.
0/ Autonomous agents are about to become Ethereum’s biggest power users.
Guest thread from @kleffew94 and @MurrLincoln on how a long-forgotten HTTP status code, ‘402 Payment Required’ could unlock a new frontier for Ethereum: agentic commerce. ????
— Ethereum (@ethereum) August 13, 2025
In a post co-authored by Coinbase developers Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr, the pair explained that HTTP 402 integration allows AI agents to send stablecoin payments automatically, enabling them to purchase services, store data, or trigger computations without human input. Coinbase has already built an “x402 payments protocol” for this purpose, as shown on its GitHub page.
According to Leffew and Murr, this change could make autonomous agents Ethereum’s “biggest power users.” They likened the process to a vending machine: an AI agent receives an HTTP 402 request, signs a transaction, makes a payment, and instantly receives the service or data — no accounts or manual steps needed.
Such capabilities could transform industries. For example, self-driving cars could pay their own operating expenses, AI models could commission on-demand content creation, and applications could autonomously pay for permanent storage. In the crypto space, AI agents are already executing trades and rebalancing portfolios in real time.
Ethereum’s trustless settlement layer, combined with stablecoins, gives these agents “atomic payments, programmable policies, and composable wallets,” the developers noted, adding that it streamlines invoicing and reduces dispute chargebacks compared to traditional systems.
Some early adopters are already experimenting: Hyperbolic Labs has used the protocol with a large language model, while Prodia Labs has deployed it for autonomous image and video generation.
“The magic of x402 isn’t just that agents can pay,”
Leffew and Murr wrote.
“It’s that they can autonomously chain services into full economic loops.”
Meanwhile, an April report by CoinGecko revealed a growing openness among crypto enthusiasts to involve AI in managing their digital assets despite lingering concerns over security and trust.
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