Coinbase’s x402 adds usage-based pricing for AI compute

Coinbase introduced Upto, an upgrade to its x402 protocol that brings usage-based pricing for AI-related compute, replacing a flat-fee structure. The Coinbase Developer Platform announced the release in a post on X, describing support for workloads such as large language model inference, compute and data queries.

The upgrade runs on the Ethereum Virtual Machine and supports all ERC-20 tokens. Payments can be processed without gas fees via the CDP Facilitator, which is intended to speed settlement for high-frequency transactions.

Upto lets sellers set a maximum price for a task while buyers preauthorize spending up to a chosen cap. The final charge reflects actual resource consumption, so users can pay less than the approved maximum. Under the previous model, simple and complex requests were billed the same, which created mismatches between cost and usage.

Coinbase presents the change as groundwork for agentic commerce, in which AI agents may trigger large numbers of small transactions to pay for compute and data in real time.

x402 was created by Coinbase and transferred to the nonprofit Linux Foundation earlier this month. Oversight runs through the x402 Foundation, whose stakeholders include Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services.

Activity on the network has slowed in 2026 after hitting a record between Nov. 4 and Nov. 10, when 13.7 million transactions were processed, according to Dune Analytics data. Weekly volume dropped below 1 million in early January and continued to decline through the first quarter, reaching 112,708 transactions in the final week of March.