Analysts at Artemis and a16z released data to dampen enthusiasm for x402 payments and agent AI commerce, calling for caution with data from stakeholders in the AI agent space that appears to be inflating activity and growth rates.
A data analysis compiled and shared by a16z cryptocurrency partner Noah Levine highlighted apparent inaccuracies in the x402.org data that Bloomberg highlighted in its March 7 report on stablecoin companies.Build a payment system for the future with autonomous AI agents that trade in stablecoins. ”
Artemis corroborated this sentiment by recalling earlier analysis by in-house analyst Lucas, who “built a wash trading filter for x402 volume, flagging wallets that repeatedly trade with themselves or circulate funds between addresses.”
a16z crypto partner Noah Levine compared AI agent payouts over a 30-day period. sauce: @nlevine19 (via X/Twitter)
Artemis: Most of the x402 numbers in circulation are noise
When headlines reported that x402 transactions accounted for 19% of all transactions on the Base network, the Ethereum L2 chain developed by the Coinbase exchange, Artemis Analytics’ Lucas didn’t buy the hype.
In his December 2025 report, he said: x402 activity began to pick up momentum at the end of October, noting how Base processed approximately 89% of the trade volume of over $335 million and 86% of the 92 million transactions.
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Solana and BNB Chain are also starting to tap into agent-based AI payment actions, but analysts continue to argue that their transaction statistics aren’t all that great when you subtract “gamified volumes,” which are artificial statistics inflated by wash trading and self-trading.
Lucas claimed that as of December, approximately 48% of transactions and 81% of trading volume were directly related to gaming trading volume, and that number could be even higher.
There’s also the issue of maintaining consistency across different monitoring platforms. x402.org reported 30-day trading volume of $24 million, while Allium Labs barely exceeded $3 million in the same period. At Artemis, the same metric is below $2 million, and Levine believes:Even the measurement infrastructure is in its infancy. ”
Game volume isn’t everything, but
While volume inflation grabs the headlines, not everything is a blatant attempt to take advantage of gaming volume. Some of that is actually the amount that comes from formal product testing by the development team.
As Lucas highlighted in December, the “moderate decline in transaction size” is a positive sign that x402 payments are on the long-term path.
Levine agreed, noting that “the infrastructure is being built” around the x402 payments ecosystem. he pointed to integration by stripe, cloudflare, Google, and Vercel As a sign of progress.
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Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering at Coinbase Developer Platform, is in charge of development. ×402, belong to the same school of thought. Citing Artemis data, Leppel claimed that the 78,000 trades from the previous day represented “approximately 108% growth compounded monthly.”
This positive sentiment ignores the decline from December highs, when daily trading volumes consistently exceeded 2 million and actual trading volume exceeded 1 million for most of the month. Instead, he compares it to a year ago. At that time, x402 transactions totaled 158 transactions for the entire week.
As for Lucas, his optimism hinges on whether x402 meets four key conditions to achieve the adoption rates favored by tech giants. stripe, cloudflare, Google, and Vercel We are betting that agent commerce will eventually become a reality.
The ERC-8004 Agent ID standard is already a step in the right direction to achieve the trust that is important in validating the authenticity of servers.
For now, the other three criteria – Discovery, Merchant Adoption and Further Standards – are still growing areas and contribute to building the World’s One. The clearest example of how cryptocurrencies, TradFi and technology are converging A complete payment ecosystem.
