AI agents will become Ethereum's ‘biggest power user,’ Coinbase devs say

Ethereum’s future will be dominated by AI agents leveraging a once-dormant web standard to make real-world payments in crypto without human input, two Coinbase devs said.

Autonomous agents — AI-powered programs that can think and transact without human input — may unlock a new world of e-commerce on Ethereum due to a largely forgotten HTTP web standard that has only recently been leveraged on the blockchain.

The dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status — defined 30 years ago — together with Ethereum Improvement Proposal 3009, enables AI agents to make stablecoin transfers without human intervention, the Ethereum Foundation said on Wednesday, sharing a “guest thread” written by Coinbase development team members Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr.

The pair said in the X post that autonomous agents may become Ethereum’s “biggest power user.” Coinbase has already implemented HTTP 402 via the “x402 payments protocol,” according to its GitHub account.