REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS

Use Cases &
Success Stories

Discover how ERC-8021, x402, and ERC-8004 are revolutionizing payments, attribution, and AI agents across industries.

USE CASE #1

AI Agent
Micropayments

Autonomous AI agents need to pay for services without human intervention. x402 enables agents to make thousands of $0.0001 payments for API calls, LLM tokens, and data access—all without gas fees.

1

Agent Opens Channel

Deposits 1 ETH into payment channel smart contract

2

Makes API Calls

Signs micropayments for each LLM inference ($0.0001 each)

3

Provider Settles

After 10,000 calls, settles $1 on-chain (ONE transaction)

Cost Comparison

Traditional L1
$5,000
10,000 txs × $0.50 gas
x402 Protocol
$0.50
1 settlement tx
99.99% Cost Reduction

Real Example

DeFi Research Agent analyzes 1,000 protocols daily:

  • • 50,000 API calls/day to data providers
  • • 100,000 LLM tokens for analysis
  • • $15/day in service costs
  • • $0.50 gas (vs $25,000 on L1)
Monthly Savings
$749,850

The Numbers

Traditional Subscription
$9.99/month
User reads 2 articles → $5/article
x402 Micropayments
$0.05/article
User reads 200 articles → $10 total
Creator Revenue Increase
+400%
More readers × fair pricing
USE CASE #2

Content Creator
Monetization

Replace subscriptions and ads with pay-per-use micropayments. Readers pay $0.02-0.05 per article, creators earn more, and there's no tracking or paywalls.

NO SUBSCRIPTIONS

Users pay only for what they consume. No $10/month for content they don't read.

NO ADS

Creators earn directly from readers. No surveillance capitalism or ad networks.

NO PAYWALLS

Content is accessible to everyone. Payment happens seamlessly in the background.

USE CASE #3

IoT & Machine-to-Machine Economy

5G Bandwidth Markets

Routers sell excess bandwidth to nearby devices. Payment by the megabyte, settled via x402 channels.

Revenue: 4.2 ETH/month
Transactions: 50,000+
Gas Cost: $2 (vs $25,000)

EV Charging

Electric vehicles pay for charging by the second. No apps, no accounts, just plug in and pay.

Cost: $0.15/kWh
Payment: Every 10 seconds
Settlement: Once per charge

Edge Computing

Devices rent out spare compute power. Payment per CPU-second, enabling true serverless economics.

Rate: $0.0001/CPU-sec
Utilization: 85%
Monthly: $127 passive income

The M2M Economy

By 2030, there will be 50 billion IoT devices. x402 enables them to transact autonomously, creating a $10 trillion machine-to-machine economy.

50B
IoT Devices
$10T
Market Size
1M
Txs/Second
$0
Gas Fees
USE CASE #4

DeFi Protocol Attribution

The Problem

DeFi protocols don't know which wallets, aggregators, or frontends bring them users. This makes it impossible to fairly distribute protocol revenue or measure marketing ROI.

Before ERC-8021
  • • No way to track user acquisition source
  • • Aggregators get no revenue share
  • • Wallets have no incentive to integrate
  • • Marketing spend is a black box
After ERC-8021
  • • Every transaction includes attribution data
  • • 10% of fees go to referring wallet
  • • Wallets compete to integrate your protocol
  • • Precise ROI tracking on-chain

Real Example: Morpho

Transaction with Attribution:
// User swaps via MetaMask on Morpho tx.data = "0x..." + encode(["metamask", "morpho"]) + SCHEMA_0 + ERC8021_MARKER // Morpho smart contract reads attribution codes = parseAttribution(tx.data) // ["metamask", "morpho"] // Distribute 10% of fees to MetaMask fees = 100 USDC metamaskShare = 10 USDC morphoShare = 90 USDC
Impact After 6 Months
+340%
Wallet integrations
$2.4M
Paid to partners
USE CASE #5

Gaming &
Metaverse

In-game purchases, item rentals, and metaverse transactions need micropayments. x402 enables pay-per-use gaming without expensive on-chain transactions.

ITEM RENTALS

Rent legendary sword for $0.10/hour instead of buying for $1000

LAND FEES

Pay $0.01/day for metaverse land instead of $10,000 upfront

POWER-UPS

Buy power-ups for $0.05 each without $2 gas fees

TOURNAMENTS

$0.50 entry fee with instant payouts to winners

Case Study: Web3 RPG

Daily Active Users
50,000
Avg Microtransactions/User
25/day
Total Daily Transactions
1.25M
Gas Savings vs L1
$624,375
per day

Ready to Build Your Use Case?

Join hundreds of developers building the future of micropayments and attribution.

View Documentation →Explore GitHub →