‘Don’t waste time with crypto': Here is what Solana Foundation's cryptic message really means

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The instauration says it is becoming a starring web for “agentic payments.”

Apr 7, 2026, 5:13 p.m.

The Solana Foundation is taking a deliberately contrarian attack to crypto selling successful San Francisco, rolling retired a billboard run that reads: “Don’t discarded clip with crypto.”

At archetypal glance, the connection whitethorn look a spot confusing arsenic a crypto instauration is saying not to discarded clip with crypto. But according to the Solana Foundation, it is simply a bullish stake connected the aboriginal of crypto that intersects with agentic AI.

Essentially, what this means is that alternatively than wasting your clip executing transactions with crypto, which mightiness beryllium cumbersome and time-consuming, fto your AI agents bash the hard work.

The advertisement directs passersby to the x402 relationship connected X, a motion to a increasing propulsion wrong the Solana ecosystem to presumption blockchain not arsenic a consumer-facing product, but arsenic invisible infrastructure for the adjacent signifier of the internet.

The connection reflects a broader thesis the ecosystem has been advancing: that crypto’s aboriginal lies successful powering an “agentic” internet, wherever artificial quality systems, not humans, initiate and execute economical activity.

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At the halfway of that imaginativeness is x402, a caller benignant of outgo system built for the internet. In elemental terms, it lets apps, websites oregon AI tools automatically complaint tiny amounts of wealth erstwhile they’re used, without requiring logins, subscriptions oregon quality involvement. For example, an AI cause could petition information from a service, instantly wage a tiny fee, and person the effect successful a azygous seamless step. The thought is to marque online payments arsenic casual and automatic arsenic loading a webpage — particularly for precise tiny transactions that accepted outgo systems conflict to handle.

This exemplary enables alleged “agentic payments,” often involving fractions of a cent, which are hard to enactment connected accepted fiscal rails owed to precocious fees and latency. Solana is betting that its precocious throughput and debased transaction costs marque it a earthy colony furniture for this emerging economy.

The billboard’s tongue-in-cheek directive encapsulates that shift. If the exertion succeeds, the statement goes, users won’t request to deliberation astir crypto astatine all.

“Crypto and Solana are good connected their mode to being the default mode AI pays,” a Solana Foundation spokesperson said, adding that agents volition gravitate toward networks wherever “performance wins.”

Read more: Solana bets connected AI agents: Foundation says web is becoming halfway infrastructure for ‘agentic’ internet

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