x402 transaction data surged dozens of times in a single week, and funds flowed to practical projects behind the ecological differentiation

The x402 protocol, an on-chain payment layer, experienced a massive surge in activity, with transaction volume increasing dozens of times in a single week, pushing its total ecosystem market cap over $780 million. This growth was driven by several key factors:

The value surge of the MEME token PING acted as a primary trigger, attracting speculative capital.
Major exchange listings from Binance and OKX, alongside support from ecosystem partners like Base, created significant exposure.
On-chain data shows a dramatic spike in daily transactions and trading volume, with a few core facilitators like Coinbase Facilitator and PayAI processing the majority of payments.
The ecosystem is now highly differentiated, with funds increasingly flowing towards practical AI projects like PAYAI and OpenServ, moving beyond pure MEME coin speculation.
A clear 'Matthew effect' is evident, where a small number of established projects, such as EigenCloud, dominate trading volume and market capitalization.

By Nancy, PANews

The long-dormant crypto market is bustling again. The open-source protocol x402 has suddenly become popular in recent days and has quickly become the focus of market attention. The related trading volume and activity have increased significantly, and ecological projects have also become a new hot spot for capital pursuit.

Transaction data surged dozens of times in a single week, driven by multiple factors including MEME, CEX, and ecosystem partners.

In May of this year, the Coinbase Developer Platform officially announced the launch of the x402 protocol, which aims to activate the 402 (Payment Required) status code, which has long been retained by HTTP but not widely used, and convert it into an on-chain payment layer for new application scenarios such as API service providers, content creators and contextual protocols.

Observing on-chain data, ecological activities have been relatively sluggish for several months after the launch of the x402 protocol, and only recently have there been significant explosive growth.

According to data from the x402scan browser, as of October 26th, the cumulative number of transactions on the x402 platform had exceeded 1.446 million. From a temporal perspective, from its launch until October 23rd, the average daily transaction volume remained in the hundreds to thousands, indicating relatively stable overall performance and limited ecosystem activity. Since October 24th, the x402 ecosystem has seen a significant surge, with daily transactions reaching hundreds of thousands, a surge of tens to hundreds of times compared to the previous period. Transactions in just one week accounted for 63.8% of the cumulative total.

Trading volume data also shows a high degree of short-term concentration. Before October 23rd, x402's daily trading volume was typically only tens to hundreds of dollars. However, in the following days, daily trading volume jumped to hundreds of thousands of dollars, contributing a cumulative trading volume of approximately $1.59 million in just three days, accounting for 69.1% of the total trading volume.

The surge in trading volume is inseparable from the rapid expansion of the number of buyers and sellers. As of October 26, x402's current number of buyers has reached 74,000, an increase of 70,000 over the past week; the number of sellers is 1,405, a 327.1% increase over the past three days.

From the perspective of transaction execution entities, Dune data shows that transaction activity is highly concentrated in a few core facilitators. Coinbase Facilitator (Base) is the largest payment processing service, processing over $1.004 million in cumulative transaction volume and over 1.16 million transactions. The second-largest facilitator, PayAI (Base and Solana), has processed over $219,000 in cumulative transaction volume and over 175,000 transactions. The remaining facilitators operate on smaller scales.

The recent short-term surge in the x402 ecosystem was primarily triggered by a surge in the price of PING, the first MEME token launched via the protocol. This event not only attracted a large influx of trading and speculative capital, but also, with the listing of the platform on major exchanges like Binance and OKX, as well as the concentrated publicity from ecosystem partners like Base, a highly concentrated exposure effect was created, driving the rapid activation of x402 in a short period of time.

Behind the rapid growth, the market is clearly divided, and funds are pouring into practical projects

With rapidly increasing market attention and a continuous influx of capital, the x402 ecosystem is rapidly expanding, encompassing client integration, services/interfaces, infrastructure and tools, learning and community resources, and facilitators. According to the latest data from Coingecko, the x402 ecosystem comprises 41 projects, with a total token market capitalization exceeding $780 million, representing an overall increase of 351.3% over the past 24 hours.

Judging from market performance, most projects saw varying degrees of growth last week, with nearly half achieving triple-digit or even quadruple-digit gains. However, it's important to note that these high-growth projects are often smaller in market capitalization, susceptible to short-term volatility driven by capital, and carry a higher risk.

In terms of trading activity, the x402 ecosystem's transaction volume reached $240 million over the past 24 hours. Of this, the established project EigenCloud accounted for nearly half, approximately $114 million. Only PING and PAYAI boasted trading volumes in the tens of millions of dollars, while less than a third of projects boasted daily trading volumes in the millions. The majority of the remaining projects saw trading volumes in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, demonstrating a significant Matthew effect within the ecosystem.

In terms of market size, EigenCloud is the main support for market capitalization, reaching approximately US$450 million. Although the project realized the instant payment function of stablecoins by integrating the x402 payment standard in October this year, its market capitalization growth was not mainly driven by the x402 ecosystem; there are only 9 medium-sized projects with a market capitalization of tens of millions of US dollars, including Bankr, PAYAI, OpenServ, PING, etc.; the remaining approximately 75% of the projects have a market capitalization of millions or even hundreds of thousands of US dollars, showing a highly differentiated market structure.

In terms of project types, the leading projects are primarily AI Agent and MEME coin. MEME coin is primarily influenced by market enthusiasm. For example, PING once led the market outside of EigenCloud, but was subsequently overtaken by AI projects such as PAYAI and OpenServ. This also shows that funds are gradually flowing into projects with practical application value.

Overall, the short-term surge in the x402 ecosystem stemmed from market interest in the emerging narrative of a novel on-chain payment protocol. Driven by early growth potential, wealth creation, and focused marketing, interest in the ecosystem quickly grew, primarily focusing on leading projects. As the enthusiasm spread, the market began to focus more on the ecosystem's practical application value and sustainable development capabilities.