Cloudflare says AI agent payments need more blockchain throughput than all of crypto combined
kleffew94 · x · 2026-09-23
- Cloudflare Director of Product Will Papper joined Unchained to explain x402, a dormant 1990s HTTP status code (402 Payment Required) revived by Coinbase for stablecoin micropayments by AI agents.
- Per Cloudflare's analysis, non-human traffic now dominates the web for the first time, breaking the ad-based model funding most of the internet. The company launched Monetization Gateway (sellers) and Wallets (buyers), making stablecoin micropayments as easy as flipping a switch.
- Papper argues monetizing even a small slice of Cloudflare's traffic requires more blockchain throughput than all existing chains combined, hence horizontal scaling.
- Early use cases: LLM inference, data licensing, indie API builders. He thinks physical retail is a poor fit for agentic payments and suggests AI agents could drive a DAO revival.
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