--- title: x402 isn’t good (yet) — Jan Curn, Apify | daily.dev description: Apify founder Jan Curn argues that x402, the emerging crypto-based agentic payments protocol built on HTTP 402, is exciting but still immature. He walks... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/x402-isn-t-good-yet-jan-curn-apify-zsckjwnb4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: x402 isn’t good (yet) — Jan Curn, Apify | daily.dev og:description: Apify founder Jan Curn argues that x402, the emerging crypto-based agentic payments protocol built on HTTP 402, is exciting but still immature. He walks... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/x402-isn-t-good-yet-jan-curn-apify-zsckjwnb4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zSCKJWNb4.png og:image:alt: x402 isn’t good (yet) — Jan Curn, Apify og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # x402 isn’t good (yet) — Jan Curn, Apify **[AI Engineer](https://daily.dev/sources/aidotengineer)** · 20 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Apify founder Jan Curn argues that x402, the emerging crypto-based agentic payments protocol built on HTTP 402, is exciting but still immature. He walks through how x402 works, its conflict with MCP's use of HTTP 401, the double-spending problem inherent in its exact and up-to payment schemes, Apify's workaround of charging then refunding, Coinbase's new batch settlement scheme (not yet implemented), and Apify's own agent.apify.com interface that lets agents buy prepaid tokens to sidestep protocol churn. He frames agentic commerce as a nascent but rapidly growing space, citing Apify's recent x402 integration with Coinbase that reportedly 10x'd the tools available on the network. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the double-spending problem in the x402 payment protocol? Until a transaction is actually submitted to the blockchain for settlement, the same wallet signature can be reused to authorize multiple requests, letting a client potentially get work done many times while only paying once. This affects both the original exact payment scheme and the newer up-to scheme introduced by Coinbase, since neither locks funds before the work is performed. _Teams weighing crypto payment rails for AI agents can follow protocol fixes like this as they land on daily.dev._ ### Why do x402 and MCP conflict with each other over HTTP status codes? The x402 specification requires servers to respond with HTTP 402 Payment Required as the first response, while MCP's authorization flow requires HTTP 401. Since a server cannot return two different status codes for the same request, companies commonly work around this by standing up separate hostnames per payment protocol, such as x402.example.com versus mcp.example.com, which duplicates API surface unnecessarily. _Developers juggling MCP and emerging payment protocols can track these standards clashes on daily.dev._ ### What is Coinbase's batch settlement payment scheme for x402? Batch settlement, introduced roughly two months before this talk, has clients deposit funds into an on-chain escrow and receive a cryptographic voucher from the server. The voucher signs many off-chain microtransactions cheaply, and the server periodically settles the accumulated total on-chain in batches, refunding unused escrow afterward, avoiding the cost of one blockchain transaction per micropayment. _Anyone integrating crypto microtransactions can watch for scheme updates like this via daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AI agents can browse the web. Now they need a way to pay for it.](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-agents-can-browse-the-web-now-they-need-a-way-to-pay-for-it--xu9muwtef) · The Next Web · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [x402.org](https://daily.dev/posts/x402-org-9f18mu1cp) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#crypto](https://daily.dev/tags/crypto), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/x402-isn-t-good-yet-jan-curn-apify-zsckjwnb4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"x402 isn’t good (yet) — Jan Curn, Apify","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/x402-isn-t-good-yet-jan-curn-apify-zsckjwnb4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/x402-isn-t-good-yet-jan-curn-apify-zsckjwnb4"},"datePublished":"2026-09-01T19:23:37.475Z","dateModified":"2026-09-01T19:54:37.097Z","description":"Apify founder Jan Curn argues that x402, the emerging crypto-based agentic payments protocol built on HTTP 402, is exciting but still immature. 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