Birbla

Discussion summary

X402 is a protocol for paywalling content, mainly aimed at AI agents rather than human users, with limited support and ecosystem fragmentation.

What the discussion says

  • Some see it as useful for AI access, not for human readers.
  • Many find the paywall introduces too much friction.
  • Support varies across browsers, with Firefox supporting it.
  • The ecosystem is fragmented, making testing difficult.
“It's mainly for AI agents with access to some working capital.”
— OG_BME
“The paywall adds friction, likely deterring human visitors.”
— beng-nl

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  • Hacker News
  • We actually just launched https://tenjin.blog/ which allows anyone to put their content on x402 without having to self host their own site and going through all this hassle!
    by AliAbdoli
  • > This literally can change how we use internet making advertisement economy internet runs on obsolete.

    Hmm, so I will pay to see websites that have ads. This may or may not be fine and solve some other problems (like paywalling AI agents), but lets not be naive. It won't replace ads, in most cases it will just be another stream.

    by entropi
  • So do/can users get a preview of the content before being required to make payment? Or is the idea that users are likely already familiar with the site/content to which they will pay? Sorry I only skimmed the article.
    by indigodaddy
  • It took a ridiculous amount of effort, but it looks like we're starting to go somewhere with this. The complexity of crypto is, um, complex and very very not user friendly. I had money in my Phantom wallet, but that wouldn't connect. I suspect it's because my USDC was on the wrong network. So then I tried the Base wallet, from Coinbase. I couldn't send money from my Phantom wallet to my Base wallet for whatever reason, so finally I used Apple Pay to load $5 (the minimum) into my Base wallet, so that I could click the button, finally, to give you $0.01.

    Except it still didn't work. When I used the mobile browser, I clicked the links and it looks like it wanted to take my money, but it returned to the site after going to base, without actually taking money. So then I used the Base app's browser to visit the site. It more convincingly tried to take money out of my wallet but the site returns Request failed: 402, which is confusing, and doesn't actually take my money.

    by fragmede
  • We are founding members of the x402 foundation and built the most popular x402 explorer, x402scan [0]

    Happy to answer any questions!

    [0] https://www.x402scan.com/

    by OG_BME
  • Why was Cloudflare rolling their own verion of the already existing L402 protocol?

    The protocol: https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/l40...

    An index of current use: https://l402index.com/

    by janandonly
  • Quite apart from whether the concept can succeed after having failed a number of well-funded and well-publicised times—

    I open https://shtein.me/api/joke in a normal-enough browser (Firefox Nightly with Enhanced Tracking Protection and uBlock Origin). After loading its 2.3MB response (no useful HTML, just a huge inlined JS blob, and served without transfer compression), it asks me to select a wallet. There are two choices.

    I select “Injected” and press “Connect wallet” (ugh, why did it require me to click three times instead of just one!?). Nothing discernible happens. No errors or network activity in the dev tools.

    I select “Coinbase Wallet” and press “Connect wallet”. It opens a popup window, <https://keys.coinbase.com/connect?sdkName=%40coinbase%2Fwall...>. The TLS connection fails, PR_END_OF_FILE_ERROR. Operating on a hunch, I discover it’s blocked in India:

      $ curl keys.coinbase.com
  The website has been blocked as per order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000.
    (coinbase.com and www.coinbase.com are similarly affected.)

    Not sure quite what to make of that, given that https://www.coinbase.com/en-in/blog/coinbase-launches-in-ind... sounds (from the snippet exposed in a search engine) like Coinbase started fully operating in India five weeks ago.

    Can’t say it leaves a positive impression.

    by chrismorgan
  • I'm curious about the legal implications of this. For example:

    - In the EU, a consumer has 14 days to withdraw from a contract that you have concluded online, unless the consumer explicitly waives this right during the purchase (so your payment required page will need an explicit statement about this).

    - I'm pretty sure in the EU, and probably most countries, you must receive an invoice, even if it's for a 1 cent purchase.

    - You might also have to pay VAT on these transactions, which will need to also be included in the invoice. This is especially important for B2B purchases, because companies can claim back VAT.

    - What happens if I complete the purchase, but there is an error in the response returned by the website? I.e. between the events of my purchase being confirmed and the server returning the response, the server dies. What recourse do I have?

    by unkl_

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