Polygon has achieved a breakthrough performance milestone by processing more than 11 million verified payment updates per second across 25 independently scaling hubs while maintaining final settlement anchored to Polygon Chain. As reported by Polygon Labs, the benchmark test used agent pay channels designed for software paying for inference, data, API calls and other services as they are consumed, instead of sending every individual payment through an onchain transaction. Each payment update was confirmed by the payment engine in 20 microseconds, excluding network latency between the user and the hub. The system combines high frequency offchain payment updates with batched settlement on Polygon, allowing an agent to make repeated small payments while working through a task. A larger hub fleet could process more than 100 million payment updates per second based on the architecture tested, with the benchmark configuration putting the processing cost for one billion payment updates at approximately $0.15.
Block has officially joined the x402 Foundation and contributed Bitcoin Lightning support to the open AI-agent payment protocol, marking a significant expansion beyond the standard's stablecoin-heavy payment base. As reported by crypto.news, the September 24 announcement reveals that Block has brought Lightning payments into x402 as part of its work on agentic commerce, with the technical addition already visible in x402's public development repository through a September 23 commit recording "exact Lightning on lnbtc". The payment company described Lightning as designed for "instant, low-cost, high-volume payments" that fit transactions requiring low costs, fast settlement and repeated small payments. Steve Lee, head of Block's Bitcoin development initiative Spiral, made a forward-looking case for the technology, stating that agents "will make billions of small payments" and such activity would need payment rails designed for frequent, inexpensive transactions.
Cardano has officially joined the x402 payment standard on September 21, enabling applications and autonomous AI agents to pay for online services directly in ADA. As reported by BeInCrypto, ADA's price responded immediately, climbing roughly 4% over the past 24 hours, hitting its highest level in four months. The Cardano Foundation engineers built the client, server, and facilitator components after the network's specification merged into the official x402 repository around September 9. The Cardano Foundation summarized the milestone directly on X, writing that the agent economy just got a Cardano rail. The facilitator has already processed a real transaction on Cardano's pre-production testing network, though mainnet deployment remains pending. The x402 protocol revives the '402 Payment Required' HTTP status code that has remained unused for decades, transforming it into a built-in checkout system that eliminates user accounts, card details, or subscription models.
The x402 protocol has demonstrated substantial growth with 75.41 million transactions and $24.24 million in volume during the previous 30 days, according to the official x402 Foundation site. The figures cover x402 as a whole and include 94,060 buyers and 22,000 sellers during the recent period. As reported by crypto.news, the protocol has attracted participation from major players, with Coinbase introducing the protocol in 2025 before moving it into open standards development. In July, Coinbase Business added support for USDC payments initiated by AI agents through x402, while Amazon Web Services integrated Coinbase x402 into Agent Core Payments in May. XRP Ledger has documented its own x402 implementation settling in XRP and RLUSD, with the network claiming 3-5 second finality. Circle reported that USDC accounted for 99.3% of x402 payment volume measured during the second quarter, though the figure covered Circle's x402 data and did not represent all AI agent payment systems.
Polygon's agent pay channels operate by allowing services to send pricing information and payment instructions directly within internet requests, with a facilitator handling payment verification and settlement. Agent pay channels begin with a payer depositing funds into a vendor agnostic channel contract on Polygon and binding a session key, with the deposited amount determining how much the agent can spend during the session. Once a service requests payment through x402, the agent sends signed cumulative vouchers through a hub as it consumes the service. The hub checks the signature, price, replay ID, authorization ceiling and remaining escrow before returning a receipt. A valid receipt lets the provider release the next unit of work, which could be a token window, data result, API response or another service. Instead of putting each payment on Polygon individually, the hub batches the accumulated state and posts an epoch Merkle root to the chain. The system uses x402 for payment requests and lets AI agents pay for tokens, API calls, data and other services as they consume them, with the design giving x402 and the payment channel separate roles. The x402 Foundation reported 75.41 million transactions and $24.24 million in volume over a recent 30-day period, while the Lightning addition gives developers a Bitcoin-based payment option alongside the stablecoins that have supplied much of the protocol's activity.
