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

Autonomous agents — AI-powered programs that tin deliberation and transact without quality input — could unlock a caller satellite of e-commerce connected Ethereum owed to a mostly forgotten HTTP web modular that has lone precocious started being leveraged connected the blockchain.

The dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” presumption — defined astir 30 years agone — unneurotic with Ethereum Improvement Proposal 3009, enables AI agents to marque stablecoin transfers without quality intervention, the Ethereum Foundation said connected Wednesday, sharing a “guest thread” written by Coinbase improvement squad members Kevin Leffew and Lincoln Murr.

The brace said autonomous agents could go Ethereum’s “biggest powerfulness user” successful the X post. Coinbase has already implemented HTTP 402 via the “x402 payments protocol,” according to its GitHub account.

Source: Ethereum Foundation

The displacement could beryllium transformative due to the fact that AI agents tin present autonomously entree funds to wage for services, removing the request for human intervention successful managing API calls, storage, oregon computation.

It could alteration everything from self-driving taxis covering their ain costs to AI models generating contented connected request and apps automatically utilizing stablecoins to store information permanently, the brace said.

Source: Ethereum Foundation

In a constricted manner, AI agents are already trading crypto by analyzing marketplace data, executing bargain oregon merchantability orders and optimizing portfolios successful existent clip without quality intervention.

As elemental arsenic a vending machine

Leffew and Murr compared the process to that of a vending machine, explaining that an AI agent receives an HTTP 402 request, signs a transaction, and makes the outgo to get the response.

Related: Tether and Rumble stake connected AI with $1.17B Northern Data acquisition

It fundamentally turns the API into a wallet-aware service, they said.

“One circular trip. Like a vending machine. No accounts required.”

Ethereum is the champion acceptable for HTTP 402

Leffew and Murr said Ethereum’s trustless colony layer makes it the perfect blockchain for HTTP 402 implementation, noting that it makes invoices and quality chargebacks acold much businesslike than accepted processes.

“They request atomic payments, programmable policies, and composable wallets. Ethereum and stablecoins springiness them precisely that.”

AI agents are already being leveraged via HTTP 402, EIP 3009

Developers are already experimenting with HTTP 402, the Coinbase workers said, pointing to Hyperbolic Labs is implementing it into its ample connection exemplary and Prodia Labs to make images and video media content.

“The magic of x402 isn’t conscionable that agents tin pay, it’s that they tin autonomously concatenation services into afloat economical loops,” Leffew and Murr concluded.

Magazine: Training AI to secretly emotion owls… oregon Hitler. Meta + AI porn? AI Eye