'Very Big For Cardano' Charles Hoskinson Hails Incoming Payment Mechanism For AI Agents

As agentic artificial intelligence (AI) gains momentum, Cardano is preparing to launch x402, an open-payment standard poised to transform the landscape for AI agents. Charles Hoskinson described the incoming standard as a major milestone for Cardano, with bulls rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of broadening use cases.

Cardano Turns Its Gaze To AI Agent Transactions With x402

According to an X post by NMKR founder Patrick Tobler, Cardano is set to enable support for the x402 open payment standard after notching a key milestone. In his post, Tobler revealed that the first x402 Proof-of-Concept memecoin mint is live, signaling an imminent mainstream launch on Cardano.

Developed by Coinbase and designed for machine-to-machine and AI agent transactions, x402 uses the previously unused HTTP status code “402 Payment Required” to enable pay-per-use access. The payment standard, leveraging stablecoins and blockchain rails for settlement, will enable users to pay for resources without the hassle of complex signatures, registrations, and emails.

“Integrating x402 into Cardano and Masumi is crucial because it enables native, automated, and verifiable payments between AI agents and services,” said Tobler in an X thread.

Particularly, Tobler noted that the move will transform Cardano into the financial backbone of the AI agent ecosystem, staving off competition from Solana and Ethereum. Meanwhile, Charles Hoskinson described the move as “very big for Cardano,” sparking enthusiasm over its impact upon launch.

While Tobler did not reveal a launch date, he disclosed that work is underway on the x402 standard for Cardano and Masumi. He added that Cardano will be the most powerful blockchain to implement x402, given its efforts to develop a standard for integration.

“By not only doing Address-To-Address like most other blockchains do but actually writing the standard to work with the Masumi Smart Contract, we’re making our x402 implementation the most powerful one out there,” remarked Tobler. Meanwhile, stablecoin giant Tether is already angling to become the backbone for AI-agent transactions, positioning USDT and Bitcoin for payments.

Following the disclosure, ADA price gained nearly 2%, showing slight flashes of brilliance for the start of a rally toward $1. Amid the buzz, CoinMarketCap data revealed that ADA has surpassed XRP, ETH, and SOL in community engagement, with ecosystem sentiment pointing bullish.

Despite prices sitting at $0.6, experts are labeling current prices as the final bottom before ADA enters “pre-parabolic phase.”