16 posts so far. Each one carries its sources and the date each was checked, the same rule the research pages follow.
These are working notes rather than research editions. The editions live in the research index. Posts here feed the standing reference page they belong to: What is x402? The plain-English guide to agentic payments.
Cloudflare Pay Per Crawl: how it works and who gets paid
Cloudflare Pay Per Crawl charges crawlers via HTTP 402 and makes Cloudflare merchant of record, and its launch post describes it as a private beta.
1 October 2026 · 6 min
Cloudflare AI Crawl Control: what it shows and what to allow
Cloudflare AI Crawl Control labels AI crawlers by purpose, letting you allow search and live-fetch bots while blocking training crawlers.
1 October 2026 · 6 min
Why Stripe shipped x402 support and then shipped MPP
Stripe x402 is not a separate Feb 2026 release: Stripe shipped MPP on 18 March 2026 to add subscriptions and reconciliation above x402.
21 September 2026 · 6 min
x402 vs AP2 vs ACP: which layer does what
AP2 owns authorisation, ACP owns commerce and order discovery, and x402 owns the payment handshake and settlement.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
The x402 protocol explained: the request, the 402, the payment, the retry
The x402 protocol uses HTTP 402 to let clients pay for resources with signed authorizations that facilitators verify and settle off-chain for the retry.
20 September 2026 · 6 min
What is the x402 Bazaar, and how do agents find your endpoint?
The x402 bazaar is Coinbase's discovery index for x402 endpoints.
20 September 2026 · 5 min
What is an x402 facilitator, and do you need one?
An x402 facilitator verifies a client's signed payment authorization and submits the on-chain transfer.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
Should you charge AI crawlers, block them, or leave them alone?
You should block AI crawlers only when their output substitutes for your product or serving them costs more than it returns.
20 September 2026 · 6 min
Readable and payable: the two halves of selling to AI agents
An agent pays for your content only if retrieval selects it first, so payable but unretrievable pages settle nothing.
20 September 2026 · 6 min
How to read x402 dashboards without being fooled
x402 scan totals disagree because each tracker counts different chains, windows, facilitators, and settlement definitions.
20 September 2026 · 6 min
How to price an API for AI agents
Price an API for AI agents by metering work rather than requests, starting from marginal cost and publishing a defensible multiple.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
How to accept x402 payments: one endpoint, one price
To accept x402 payments, start with one endpoint, one price, and one facilitator using the exact scheme.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
Coinbase built x402 and gave it away. What does it still control?
Coinbase handed the x402 specification and economics to the Linux Foundation's x402 Foundation, but kept key operational layers.
20 September 2026 · 6 min
Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway: pricing the web for agents
Cloudflare x402 pricing has three layers: AI Crawl Control classifies crawlers, Pay Per Crawl meters requests, and Monetization Gateway meters resources.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
Can you prove an AI agent made a payment? Not from the chain alone.
Onchain x402 records show that a payment settled, not who or what initiated it, so an agent payment and a cron job can look identical.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
Agentic payments, explained: the five protocols and what each one does
A payment is agentic when software chooses what to buy, from whom, at what price, and when, within limits a person or business sets.
20 September 2026 · 7 min
Published 2026-10-01. Written by Narender Charan, who runs Kunzum.