x402 Payability Observatory — week 2026-W42
How much of the x402 surface an agent can actually pay, and why the rest can't. Every endpoint Settled tracks is probed unpaid on the verb its listing declares and, when that fails, on the other verb; payees are checked on Base; a scout wallet buys from every seller listed up to $0.25 in turn, for real. Generated 2026-10-15 15:17 UTC · JSON · sample CSV (CC BY 4.0) · signed daily snapshot
A new count from this issue. x402 payments are now USDC payments whose amount equals a price the seller quotes, leaving out self-payments and wallets that paid more than 20 sellers (crawlers and monitors). The last Observatory (2026-W41) said $256,292: it counted every USDC transfer into these sellers' wallets, shop checkouts and round-sum transfers included, which overstated it. Counted the new way, Oct 1–7 comes to about $8,099 (267,332 payments). Those days were recorded before payments were matched one by one, so they count by daily totals: a payer's day with a seller counts when its payments average $1 or less.
Payability
| Verdict | Endpoints | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
payable | 65,714 | valid 402 quote on the verb that answers; nothing paid yet |
cannot_pay_either_verb | 2,568 | neither GET nor POST yields a 402 or a 2xx |
delivered | 1,417 | paid and delivered — a real payment came back with a real response |
malformed_402 | 321 | answers 402 but the quote is malformed |
free | 301 | 2xx without a paywall |
unreachable | 266 | no HTTP answer |
auth_gated | 112 | 401/403 before any payment |
unpriced | 13 | valid 402 but no accept we can price |
Scout (real payments)
1,267 payments this week, $9.42 spent. 1,211 came back with content (95.6%); 753 matched their listing and 86 did not. Every purchase, with its transaction. 2,705 payee addresses checked on Base; 433 had never been used.
By listed price
| Listed price | Sellers bought this week | Purchases | Spent | Delivered | Paid, nothing back | Sellers on hold |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| up to $0.01 | 1,044 of 1,443 | 1,150 | $5.69 | 95.9% | 47 | 2 |
| $0.01 to $0.05 | 16 of 338 | 117 | $3.74 | 92.3% | 9 | 0 |
| $0.05 to $0.25 | 0 of 167 | 0 | $0 | — | 0 | 0 |
| $0.25 to $1.00 | 0 of 71 | 0 | $0 | — | 0 | 0 |
A seller is a payTo wallet, counted in the tier of its cheapest payable endpoint; purchases count at the listed price of what was bought. The scout buys each seller's cheapest endpoint in turn: sellers up to $0.25 at most once a week, and sellers whose endpoints all cost more (up to $1.00) at most once every 60 days, a few rows a run from a daily allowance of their own. Delivered: content came back. Paid, nothing back: the scout paid and got nothing usable. On hold: that happened twice in 30 days across more than half of the endpoints the scout bought from the seller, so the scout stopped buying and /v1/preflight answers avoid until a purchase delivers.
Biggest live hosts
| Host | Live | Payable |
|---|---|---|
| market.datapackvibe.com | 20,594 | 20,620 |
| dev.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,580 | 1,583 |
| monitor.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,343 | 1,344 |
| agentshelf.syntexa.ch | 1,193 | 1,193 |
| data.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,142 | 1,142 |
| ip.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,073 | 1,073 |
| site.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,063 | 1,063 |
| dns.intel.rallylive.ca | 1,062 | 1,063 |
The thread
x402 Payability Observatory · Oct 8–15 70,712 endpoints tracked, 70,712 probed unpaid (GET, then POST if needed): • 67,131 payable (94.9% of probed) · +15,398 new · 1,322 went dark Data (CC BY): settled.tools/observatory
2/ Why the rest can't be paid (every endpoint is tried on GET and POST before it is written off): pays on neither verb: 2,568 malformed 402: 321 free (no paywall): 301 unreachable: 266 auth-gated: 112 unpriced: 13
3/ Scout: 1,267 real USDC payments to 1,099 sellers this week, 1,211 delivered content (95.6%), 753 matched their listing, 86 did not, $9.42 spent. 1,422 endpoints carry a paid-and-delivered verdict.
4/ 3,249 live hosts · $11,085 in x402 payments reached 724 seller wallets (ledger: Aug 27–Oct 15, 2,113 indexed sellers). The biggest hosts: market.datapackvibe.com: 20,594 live, 20,620 payable dev.intel.rallylive.ca: 1,580 live, 1,583 payable
5/ Every verdict is EIP-191 signed and the whole index is snapshotted daily, hash-chained (verify at /v1/verify, /v1/snapshots). Sample CSV: CC BY 4.0. Other measurers: publish your verdicts for the same sample and let's compare where we disagree — reply. Not financial advice.
6/ New count: x402 payments are now payments of a price the seller quotes, crawlers and monitors left out. The last issue's $256,292 counted every USDC transfer to seller wallets, shop checkouts and round-sum transfers included. Counted this way, Oct 1–7 was about $8,099.
Method and license
Liveness: an unpaid request with Accept: application/json on the declared verb, then the other verb if that one returned neither 402 nor 2xx; three consistent failures before a terminal status. Payability derives from the damped status plus the latest quote. Payee existence: USDC balance, nonce or code on Base via Multicall3. Delivery: real payments by the scout wallet, coverage first: every seller whose cheapest endpoint is listed up to $0.25 in turn, at most once a week, and sellers up to $1.00 at most once every 60 days; each purchase is judged on a 2xx with non-empty, non-error content. x402 payments: USDC payments into indexed sellers' wallets on Base whose amount equals a price the seller quotes (days recorded before 2026-10-14 hold only daily totals: a day's payments count when they average $1 or less), leaving out self-payments and wallets that paid more than 20 sellers in the window (crawlers and monitors). The sample CSV and this page are licensed CC BY 4.0; attribute "Settled (settled.tools)". Other measurers: publish your verdicts for the same sample and let's compare — reply on X or write in.
Data: Settled probes, sanctioned venue APIs and Base on-chain payout logs. Best-effort, not financial advice. Labels marked "suspected" can be disputed. Machine-readable: /v1/income/venues · llms.txt · openapi.json