X402 – Protocol for Micropayments and the Rise of an Agentic Economy

OP here. I just thought this system of micropayments could really help with web quality/signal/remuneration...the web's own longstanding "cold fusion" challenge.

"x402 operates through standard HTTP mechanics, meaning it can integrate with any existing web infrastructure without requiring specific SDKs or tooling. Add a line of middleware, configure your endpoint, and you're good to go."

So let's say ChatGPT/Perplexity or another "AI service" linked to you, they would send the user to your page and a micropayment would then be earned from the visitor, but the referring service would also get a commission on that payment within the transaction. Yes it is a paywall, but so what, there could also be a non-paywalled version.

Also, the AI service could provide a summary of that page, to be embedded on your page to give the page more value to the end user. Also, users can change in their AI service settings whether to see paywalled/non-paywalled reference links in their chat box.

The AI service (and you) would see in realtime how much they are earning by sending visitors to your site. There can also be charts and metrics to see what is trending at any one time and payments can be lowered the older content gets.

Micropayments can mean less ads. It can also mean higher content quality.

So the risk here is a "clone web" appearing where all paywalled content is mirrored for free somewhere. Fine, the AI service works out ways to filter that content out of its harvesting destinations. Also, when you post new content, you ping the AI service that you have just published new content, and the service can more quickly work out when/if it has been cloned elsewhere. The other benefit of doing this, is that the service can better work out if content is original (and harvestable) vs being recycled/derivative/generative. Also, the "clone web" may be older - sure you can go to it, but it might not be as timely.

Another thing is having adjustable micropayments - the user decides how much to pay - and suggestions can be made how much or little to outlay within their "tipjar." It depends on how expensive the AI service or publisher wants to be... or how stingy the user wants to be.

Also, with micropayments, bot traffic should decrease too, or at least be monetizable. Payments from bot traffic could really be ramped up.