Chainalysis: agentic commerce on Coinbase's Base grew from ~1,500 transactions in Q2 2025 to 138M+ in Q3 2026; 87%+ of the payments were for less than 10 cents (Camila Grigera Naón/Fortune)
The field of agentic commerce, which describes the use of AI agents to carry out internet transactions, is rapidly maturing, and crypto is fueling the boom.
A new report from blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis indicates that agentic commerce, which involves AI agents performing internet transactions, is maturing rapidly with cryptocurrency fueling the growth. Developers are increasingly providing AI agents with their own budgets to purchase computing power, code tools, and live web data.
This is typically achieved by funding an AI bot's wallet with stablecoins, such as Circle's USDC, allowing the bot to pay for services like up-to-date information or more capable AI models without requiring human approval for every purchase.
On the Coinbase-incubated blockchain Base, cumulative payments through the x402 protocol rose from approximately 1,500 transactions in mid-2025 to more than 138 million by the third quarter of 2026. According to the report, more than 87% of these payments were for less than 10 cents, an amount where credit card processing fees can exceed the cost of the service itself.
Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Fortune — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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