스크립트
00:00:00Hello everyone. Last year here at AI Engineer World's Fair, David Kramer from
00:00:17Sentry had a mildly provocative talk called "MCP isn't good yet." And back then
00:00:22MCP was the new kid on the block, right? It was like a lot of hype around it, people
00:00:26were excited about it, but also it wasn't really developed back then very much and it
00:00:31was fairly clunky. And in this talk, David argued, "Hey, this technology is cool, but
00:00:36it has a lot of rough edges, right? So just go play with it, but have your expectations
00:00:41low." By the way, they went on and actually built one of the best MCP servers on the market,
00:00:47Sentry MCP. It's a very well-designed server, nice design and so on. And actually over the
00:00:53last year, MCP became like a standard that's actually widely adopted across the industry,
00:00:58like the top AI agents like Claude and ChatGPT. Actually, Claude offers MCP connectors, right?
00:01:04So you can plug tools into your AI agents. ChatGPT calls it apps, but you can also like, you
00:01:12know, directory of different services you can plug into your Claude. And it actually became
00:01:15a standard thing for agent-2 interaction, right? And despite a little hate also about MCP, you
00:01:23know, I have yet to see CLI connectors in any of these agents, right? So MCP won. And so inspired
00:01:30by David's talk, today I have a similar talk, which is called X402 isn't good yet. And in
00:01:38that talk I would like to argue, you know, that while X402 is very exciting technology,
00:01:42it does also still some rough edges, you know? And perhaps, if I do it as well, we'll also
00:01:47build one of the best integrations with X402 on the market like Sentry did with MCP.
00:01:53My name is Jan Chern. I'm the founder and CEO of Appify. And for those who don't know,
00:01:57Appify is the largest marketplace of tools for AI. We have about 45,000 of these tools.
00:02:05We call them actors. And they are spending use cases like, you know, extraction of data
00:02:09from social media sites, e-commerce, hospitality, travel, search engines, maps. But over time
00:02:14also like AI agents or agentic use cases, you know, different automations and so on, right?
00:02:21And some of these tools, some of these actors are built by our community. Some are built by
00:02:26us. And our community is making now more than $1 million per month on payouts by selling
00:02:32these tools, right? So they build the tools, we sell them to users, and, you know, we pass
00:02:38the money to them. And so it's a thriving marketplace. And I guess by now everybody
00:02:41understands like why we are so excited about agentic payments, right? Because we really
00:02:45want our tools to be easily accessible to agents, like wherever they are, with whatever protocol
00:02:51is out there. Just two days ago, we launched together with Coinbase our X4O2 integration.
00:02:59I would say the launch went pretty viral. We got like about a million views. And before this
00:03:08launch, there were about like 2,000 tools available on the agentic market, basically on X4O2. We brought
00:03:18another 20,000 tools, so basically we 10x the size of the agentic market on X4O2. So this is very
00:03:24exciting for us, and we believe also for the community. And actually, we're very excited about
00:03:31this topic like long term. So actually last year here at AI Engineer World's Fair, I was the
00:03:35only one talking about the agentic commerce and agentic economy in general, and really argued
00:03:40that like in a couple of years, like most of the economic activity in the world will be done
00:03:45autonomously between agents. And actually it looks like really it picked up. I think like
00:03:54now everybody understands that agents, in order to get work done or like longer jobs without even
00:03:59intervention, they will actually need to have budget as well, right? It's not like you can do a lot of
00:04:05things in this world without money. And once agents, you know, can be trusted with money, they will
00:04:11complete like far longer and, you know, more complex tasks than they can do now. So obviously, a lot of
00:04:17people understand this across the industry. So over the past year or so, we saw a lot of new standards or
00:04:25agentic payments protocol coming to the market. Because obviously, every player in finance or payments is
00:04:31very excited about this opportunity because everybody wants to get a part of this, of this like huge future
00:04:36agentic economy and the transaction volume. So first was L402. It was like in mid 2020. But then MasterCard
00:04:47AgentPay, we have X402 by Coinbase in May last year, KYPay from Skyfire with Visa, APA2 by Google, ACP by OpenAI and Stripe,
00:04:58TAB by Visa, UCP by Google and Shopify, ACTP by Alipay, MPP by Stripe and Tempo, AMP by Alipay, APOP by UnionPay,
00:05:07APP by OKEx, and finally, AgentPay for Machines by MasterCard. You can see this is really becoming a heated
00:05:14battleground and for the future of the agentic commerce. And it's really hard to sort of keep track of all the standards and all the technologies we're trying to. But I would say for crypto world,
00:05:27actually Svex asked all the speakers not to use sloppy AI generated images in presentations, but I couldn't resist myself here.
00:05:34I think for crypto world, like the agentic commerce has been like super exciting news. Like because finally, there is like a really solid use case for crypto, except for like trading and gambling, buying illegal substances on marketplaces and
00:05:49hiding money away from your spouses, right. So finally, agentic commerce really brings the like long sought like use case for crypto that I actually think is pretty solid.
00:05:58And I'm not like a crypto bro myself. I am not hodling anything. Actually, I was fairly skeptical to crypto all the time. But I feel that crypto is really well suited for agentic commerce or agentic payments. Why? Because the traditional payment methods designed for people are super expensive. And you know, like crazy.
00:06:07credit cards, PayPal or you know, bank debits, they cannot be used for microtransactions. They are just very ineffective. As we saw in this presentation as well. So, but there's another problem.
00:06:14there are buyer disputes. Like anybody who is selling things online, you know, like anybody who is selling things online, you know that there are some people who sort of like buy services from your website and then dispute the payment and ask for a refund, you know, or dispute it through their bank, anything like that.
00:06:31So, you know, there are some people who sort of like buy services from your website and then dispute the payment and ask for a refund, you know, or dispute it through their bank, anything like that.
00:06:43Like, in like traditional, like, well, human economy, there are some trust signals you can do with the credit cards, you know, like Stripe and others have different services to prevent fraud and so on.
00:06:57But in agentic interaction, like, you really have no idea who the agent is. Like, there's no agent identity. I mean, there are some standards being developed, but it's really not clear who are you transacting with.
00:07:08So, you just can't allow them to dispute the payments. It needs to be a one-way transaction and it needs to be like safe for you. Right? So, I think crypto is a superposition for that. But also, there's an important part.
00:07:22Crypto, if done well, it's like truly decentralized blockchain where no company has, like, majority of, you know, of the vote in the network. It can be really decentralized and it can be like a public standard, you know, not owned by a single company who, for example, like Visa or MasterCard sort of would abuse their dominant power, you know, to extract fees from the system.
00:07:44So, I'm very, very bullish on crypto in this space. And there are basically, like, currently two largest crypto payment providers for agentic payments.
00:07:56One is X402 from Coinbase and second was MPP, Machine Payments Protocol for Stripe. Looking at the stats just yesterday, X402 is, like, 20 times larger in the number of transactions and the volume.
00:08:10So, obviously, we went first with implementation of X402, but we added MPP in the process as well. And today, I'm going to share, like, a bit of our experience.
00:08:19This was also presented in the slide before. X402 built on the status code introduced, like, almost 30 years ago in the original HTTP specification called 402 Payment Required.
00:08:31So, this status code was waiting for 30 years patiently for someone to pick it up. And, obviously, Coinbase threw that opportunity because, obviously, it's great for marketing. You know, we're finally making internet money work. It's awesome.
00:08:43So, how it works? I'll just go quickly because we saw it in the last presentation as well. So, first, the client initiates, like, calls the server with some API request. The server responds. And, actually, this is an important part.
00:08:53The specification enforces the server to respond 402 Payment Required. There is no other way to do that. It needs to use the 402.
00:09:01Then, you know, the client creates a signature by basically withdrawing money from the wallet or, you know, allocating the budget from the wallet.
00:09:09Sends the signature to the server. Oh, the server verifies with the facilitator, which can be, like, Coinbase, for example, whether the transaction is correct.
00:09:19It gets confirmation that the transaction is right. And then it's supposed to do the work, right? But there is a problem there. I'll get to that in a second.
00:09:29And after the work is done, you send a request to the facilitator to settle, which means, like, you know, physically transfer the money to your own wallet.
00:09:39And then the facilitator performs the operation on the blockchain. Transaction is confirmed. Everything is settled. All good.
00:09:46But there is a problem here. In this moment, like, until the transaction is actually submitted to the blockchain,
00:09:54the buyer can use the same wallet and same money to other transactions, basically. There is, like, nothing preventing the client from double spending.
00:10:02So, you know, it can just create, like, 1,000 signatures like that, send, like, 1,000 requests, and then, you know, like, maybe it will not get the results.
00:10:13But let's say, if it's, like, a simple API call, you know, where there's, like, zero marginal cost for you as a provider, you can do it.
00:10:20You can do the work, you know, before you settle.
00:10:23But imagine there is, like, some non-trivial work, or maybe you have to pay external service.
00:10:28And then you realize, oh, the money is gone, right? The client skipped out on the bill, which is not great.
00:10:35So there is a work around that. You can actually just do the work after the transaction is settled.
00:10:41You just need to make sure you actually get the work done, you don't fail, and so on, because then the clients would be pretty angry, I guess.
00:10:47But there is a work around for this. And then you send, like, 200 okay, and payment response, all good.
00:10:53So, there is a problem, though. Like, as I showed before, like, the standard requires HTTP 402 as a first response from the server.
00:11:04But MCP plus alt requires HTTP 401. So there are, like, two conflicts in the standards, and, you know, each of them are actually enforcing it, and you cannot, like, sort of, like, you know,
00:11:15have written two error codes or two status codes at the same time.
00:11:18So, how do companies resolve that? Well, quite often, they create a dedicated, like, host name.
00:11:24Host, like, let's say, x402.alchemy.com to serve just the agentic payments gateway.
00:11:29So, they implement, basically, a new API host just to serve the agentic payments, and then they have, like, mcp.alchemy.com,
00:11:39and maybe mpp.alchemy.com, right? But it sounds like an antepattern. Why would you have to duplicate, like,
00:11:44your API host for different payment providers? It's, like, imagine, like, you had, like, Amazon.com for different, like, credit cards.
00:11:52You had, like, 20 different Amazons. Like, it doesn't make sense, right? So, I think that's, like, one of the weaknesses.
00:11:57It's, like, I understand, like, using HTTP 402 is great for marketing, but I think there should be, in protocol,
00:12:03some way to circumvent that and use just purely headers, you know? So, for example, the payment-required header without the status code.
00:12:13And then, originally, when Explorer 2 was created, it was designed for, like, fixed payments.
00:12:22The first payment scheme they introduced was called Xact, and it's, like, for simple API calls.
00:12:29Like, there's, like, a fixed fee per transaction, fixed fee per call, which is great for, I don't know, simple APIs.
00:12:34But, unfortunately, Appify Actors are tools on the marketplace. They typically perform bad jobs, and, you know, they can run for, you know, a few seconds, but they can also run for a few hours and consume a lot of resources on the way.
00:12:46They are, like, typically, like, built as you go, kind of, like, metered billing.
00:12:51So, how to do that? Like, how to put this on Explorer 2? So, in May 2025, Coinbase introduced Explorer 2 with the exact payment scheme.
00:12:59In December 2025, they announced the version 2 of the protocol, which was promising the App2 payment scheme to kind of fix this problem of, like, metered billing.
00:13:08But it took, actually, another, like, half a year, almost, to release the App2 finally.
00:13:15It was just, like, two or three months ago. So, we were super excited about that.
00:13:18We were, like, finally, we can make this work for our services.
00:13:23But then we realized, actually, the same double-spending problem on Xact is also with App2.
00:13:29I mean, App2, it was just a small sort of, like, improvement to the protocol where, when you, you know, call the tool, you say, oh, my maximum is $5.
00:13:38And then the server can charge anything up to $5. But it doesn't prevent the double-spending problem.
00:13:43So, basically, we are sort of stuck again. So, you know, we have to go back to the drawing boards and figure, like, how to do that.
00:13:50And so, one way we did it was we just used exact payment scheme. So, kind of, like, fixed, like, charge a fixed payment.
00:13:59And then, after the job is done, we would, like, refund the wallet with the leftover money, basically, the money that wasn't spent.
00:14:09I mean, that worked. But, so, you charge, you do the work, you refund the remainder.
00:14:14But that means, like, there's suddenly, like, two blockchain transactions.
00:14:17That means, like, there's a time, you know, to settle those transactions.
00:14:22There might be, like, some fees associated with that and so on.
00:14:25And also, the clients really need to trust the server to kind of, like, hey, I give you the money, but you give it to be back, right?
00:14:31But I think that's a milder issue. But it just feels somehow clunky.
00:14:35Like, why would we need to do these workarounds? You know, this protocol should support these things out of the box.
00:14:40So, just two months ago, Coinbase introduced, like, new payment scheme, which is called Batch Settlement, which looks very promising.
00:14:47We haven't implemented it yet, so we'll report soon on that.
00:14:50But basically, just quickly, it works, like, so first the clients, like, deposit some money.
00:14:54So, basically, it's actually, like, real transactional blockchain using some Ethereum virtual machine black magic, basically.
00:15:01The money is put into escrow. And then, the client gets back a voucher, like, from the server.
00:15:07Say, hey, here is some cryptographic voucher, and you can use it to sign, like, microtransaction as part of this batch.
00:15:14And then, like, the client sends requests, for example, like, API calls or, you know, for, like, individual tokens, whatever.
00:15:20And uses, like, passes this voucher to sign those, like, micropayments.
00:15:26But these transactions are basically off-chain. They are just, like, sort of, like, cryptographically guaranteed locally.
00:15:33But you don't need to, like, write these, like, to the blockchain, which, again, is inefficient, slow, you know, expensive.
00:15:39And then, at some point, you're like, hey, I accumulated a lot of these, like, microtransactions, so I just, like, settle them in batch.
00:15:45And then, like, you basically perform the transactional blockchain, and then you can do this a couple of times, and eventually refund the rest of the money, like, sort of, like, release the escrow, right?
00:15:55So, actually, this looks really cool, very exciting. We're currently working on implementing it now, so we'll see.
00:16:02So, how did we resolve, like, all this to make it work, right? So, we didn't really want to create, like, new endpoints for different payment services.
00:16:11We didn't want to, like, hack the variable usage, you know, to our services.
00:16:15And also, we really don't want to, like, tweak too much our API because we have, like, tens of thousands of customers depending on that API.
00:16:22So, we just can't, like, sort of, like, you know, do whatever, like, new agentic payment standard is out there and just implement it right away.
00:16:29So, kind of, to fix these problems, let me introduce you, let me introduce our newest service on Apify, which is called agi.apify.com.
00:16:39And AGI is not what you mean it is. It's actually, it stands for Agent General Interface.
00:16:46So, instead of, like, Application Programming Interface, we have Agent General Interface that can change any time because it's used by agents, so they're flexible, right?
00:16:54And on AGI, it's just a simple website with, like, one markdown document.
00:16:59It's not designed for people, so it kind of looks ugly, but it's okay.
00:17:03And there's instructions for agents, like, hey, how can you actually buy things on Apify yourself through X402, MPP?
00:17:11We can iterate quickly on this website or on this service because, you know, agents can pick up new version.
00:17:17It's not, like, fixed, like, API that needs to be, basically, you know, backwards compatible all the time.
00:17:24And the way it works is, like, the agent comes to agi.apify.com, gets, basically, can buy a prepaid token.
00:17:33So, basically, they say, like, hey, here's $5, give me, give me Apify token.
00:17:38We give them, like, Apify token back, and then they can use the Apify token through our normal API or through MCP to run our jobs and services, you know, normally.
00:17:48And it works pretty well.
00:17:49There is, like, no skill required.
00:17:51You just, like, point your agent to agi.apify.com.
00:17:54It picks it up.
00:17:55And I have here, like, a short demo.
00:17:58We're running out of time.
00:18:00So, this is just, like, example how it works, like.
00:18:02Actually, the X40 ecosystem is, like, really early so that even, you know, we have to build our own, like, local wallet tool which you can, like, create, like, local, like, cryptographic key to charge, you know, with money and show QR code.
00:18:17Like, I mean, these things are still not existing.
00:18:19I mean, the ecosystem is, like, super, super early.
00:18:21So, I have local wallet with $10.
00:18:24Then I call, like, the agi.apify.com, allocate, like, token with $1.
00:18:30I get back 402 payment required.
00:18:32So, there is, like, this, like, super long, like, payment required signature.
00:18:36I use Apify, I use our MCPC, which is, like, MCPC, like client, to sign the payment.
00:18:47And then I can send the, oh.
00:18:50Oh, oh, oh.
00:18:52This demo didn't work as expected.
00:18:56Uh, here we go.
00:18:58Hmm.
00:19:01Well, anyway, uh, I have one minute left.
00:19:06Then we'll come later.
00:19:09Sorry about that.
00:19:11So, to conclude my presentation, like, really, like, try it out and, like, try to build, try to use it.
00:19:18Like, actually, I tried to use it for the first time, like, a couple of weeks ago.
00:19:21Because I always thought, oh, my God, it's somehow complicated, you know?
00:19:23There is a lot of this, like, weird crypto lingo, you know?
00:19:25Like, I don't know what it means.
00:19:27But actually, it's really, really simple to play with that.
00:19:30You can, you know, get up and running in, like, ten minutes.
00:19:33And, uh, it's still super early.
00:19:36Uh, I think there's, like, one million dollars transaction volume, like, per month.
00:19:39Like, this is nothing, right?
00:19:40Like, the economy is much, much bigger.
00:19:41But I think it will soon ramp up.
00:19:43And I think once, uh, really this, like, era of, like, uh, token subsidies will end.
00:19:49I mean, when the, when you really will have to pay for the tokens, you know, that your agents consume.
00:19:54I think suddenly this decision whether to build or buy will, you know, make more economic sense, actually,
00:19:59to buy external, you know, services for all those things, rather than build from scratch.
00:20:03And I think at this time, really, the agentic payments will explode.
00:20:06And, uh, very soon, uh, uh, uh, the agenticommerce might, uh, overtake the normal commerce.
00:20:14Thanks a lot for your attention.
00:20:15And please come, uh, to join us, uh, in our booth.
00:20:19And actually, I have another talk coming up in two hours, uh, about MCP and CLI.
00:20:24So, you can check this one as well in expo stage two.
00:20:27Thank you.
00:20:36Thank you.