Author: 0xjacobzhao
This independent research report is supported by IOSG Ventures. The research and writing process was inspired by related research reports by Raghav Agarwal@LongHash and Jay Yu@Pantera. We thank Lex Sokolin @ Generative Ventures, Jordan@AIsa, and Ivy@《支无不言》blog for their valuable suggestions. Feedback was also solicited from the project teams of Nevermined, Skyfire, Virtuals Protocol, AIsa, Heurist, and AEON during the writing process. This article strives for objectivity and accuracy; however, some viewpoints involve subjective judgment and may contain biases. We ask for the reader's understanding.
Agentic Commerce refers to a full-process business system in which AI agents autonomously complete service discovery, trust assessment, order generation, payment authorization, and final settlement.
It no longer relies on step-by-step human operation or information input, but rather on intelligent agents that automatically collaborate, place orders, make payments, and fulfill contracts in a cross-platform and cross-system environment, thereby forming a closed-loop business model (M2M Commerce) that is autonomously executed between machines. In the crypto space, the most practical applications are currently concentrated in stablecoin payments and DeFi. Therefore, in the process of integrating Crypto and AI, the two most valuable paths are: AgentFi, which relies on existing mature DeFi protocols in the short term, and Agent Payment, which revolves around stablecoin settlement and gradually improves upon protocols such as ACP/AP2/x402/ERC-8004 in the medium to long term. Agentic Commerce, in the short term, is limited by factors such as protocol maturity, regulatory differences, and merchant acceptance, making rapid scaling difficult; however, in the long term, payment is the underlying anchor of all commercial loops, making Agentic Commerce the most valuable in the long run. I. Agentic Commerce Payment System and Application Scenarios In the Agentic Commerce system, the real-world merchant network is the greatest value scenario. Regardless of how AI Agents evolve, traditional fiat currency payment systems (Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, bank transfers) and rapidly growing stablecoin systems (USDC, x402) will coexist for a long time, jointly forming the foundation of intelligent agent commerce. Real-world merchants—from e-commerce, subscriptions, SaaS to travel, paid content, and enterprise procurement—carry trillions of dollars in demand and are the core source of value for AI Agents' automatic price comparison, renewals, and procurement. In the short term, mainstream consumption and enterprise procurement will continue to be dominated by traditional fiat currency payment systems. The core obstacle preventing stablecoins from scaling in real-world commerce is not solely technology, but rather the lack of regulatory mechanisms (KYC/AML, taxation, consumer protection), merchant accounting (illegal payment of stablecoins), and dispute resolution mechanisms arising from irreversible payments. Due to these structural limitations, stablecoins are unlikely to enter highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, aviation, e-commerce, government, and utilities in the short term. Their implementation will primarily focus on scenarios with lower regulatory pressure or those native to the blockchain, such as digital content, cross-border payments, Web3 native services, and the machine economy (M2M/IoT/Agent). This is precisely the window of opportunity for Web3 native smart agent commerce to achieve its first scale breakthrough. However, regulatory institutionalization is rapidly progressing towards 2025: the US stablecoin bill has achieved bipartisan consensus, Hong Kong and Singapore have implemented stablecoin licensing frameworks, the EU's MiCA has officially come into effect, Stripe supports USDC, and PayPal has launched PYUSD. The clarification of the regulatory structure means that stablecoins are being accepted by the mainstream financial system, opening up policy space for future cross-border settlements, B2B procurement, and the machine economy. The core of Agentic Commerce is not to replace one payment method with another, but to entrust the execution of "order placement - authorization - payment" to an AI Agent, allowing traditional fiat currency payment systems (AP2, authorization certificates, identity compliance) and stablecoin systems (x402, CCTP, smart contract settlement) to each leverage their respective advantages. It is neither a zero-sum competition between fiat currency and stablecoins, nor a single-track alternative narrative, but a structural opportunity to simultaneously expand the capabilities of both sides: fiat currency payments continue to support human commerce, while stablecoin payments accelerate machine-native and on-chain native scenarios. The two complement each other and become the twin engines of the agent economy.
II. A Panoramic View of the Underlying Protocol Standards for Agentic Commerce
The protocol stack of Agentic Commerce consists of six layers, forming a complete machine commerce chain from "capability discovery" to "payment delivery".
The A2A Catalog and MCP Registry are responsible for capability discovery, while ERC-8004 provides on-chain verifiable identity and reputation. ACP and AP2 are responsible for structured order placement and authorization instructions, respectively. The payment layer consists of a traditional fiat currency track (AP2) and a stablecoin track (x402) running in parallel. There is no unified standard for the delivery layer.

III. Detailed Explanation of Key Core Protocols for Agentic Commerce
Around the five key aspects of Agentic Commerce—service discovery, trust assessment, structured ordering, payment authorization, and final settlement—Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, Stripe, Ethereum, Coinbase, and other organizations have proposed underlying protocols for their respective aspects, thus jointly building the next-generation Agentic Commerce core protocol stack.
Agent-to-Agent (A2A) – Agent Interoperability Protocol (Google)
A2A is an open-source protocol initiated by Google and donated to the Linux Foundation, aiming to provide a unified communication and collaboration standard for AI Agents built by different vendors and frameworks.
A2A is an open-source protocol initiated by Google and donated to the Linux Foundation, aiming to provide a unified communication and collaboration standard for AI Agents built by different vendors and frameworks. A2A, based on HTTP + JSON-RPC, enables secure and structured message and task exchange, allowing Agents to natively conduct multi-turn dialogues, collaborative decision-making, task decomposition, and state management. Its core goal is to build an "Internet of Agents," allowing any A2A-compatible Agent to be automatically discovered, invoked, and combined, thus forming a cross-platform, cross-organizational distributed Agent network. Model Context Protocol (MCP) – Unified Tool Data Access Protocol (Anthropic) MCP, introduced by Anthropic, is an open protocol connecting LLMs/Agents with external systems, focusing on unified tool and data access interfaces. It abstracts databases, file systems, remote APIs, and proprietary tools into standardized resources, enabling Agents to securely, controllably, and auditably access external capabilities. MCP's design emphasizes low integration costs and high scalability: developers only need to interface once to allow Agents to use the entire tool ecosystem. Currently, MCP has been adopted by many leading AI companies and has become the de facto standard for agent-tool interaction.

MCP focuses on "how the agent uses tools"—providing the model with unified and secure access to external resources (such as databases, APIs, file systems, etc.), thereby standardizing the interaction between agent-tool / agent-data.
... A2A addresses the question of "how an agent can work with other agents"—establishing native communication standards for intelligent agents across vendors and frameworks, supporting multi-turn dialogues, task decomposition, state management, and long lifecycle execution, and serving as the foundational interoperability layer between intelligent agents.

Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) – Order and Checkout Protocol (OpenAI × Stripe)
ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) is an open ordering standard (Apache 2.0) proposed by OpenAI and Stripe, establishing a structured ordering process that can be directly understood by machines for the buyer-AI agent-merchant. The protocol covers product information, price and terms verification, settlement logic, and payment voucher transmission, enabling AI to securely initiate purchases on behalf of users without becoming a merchant.
Its core design is that AI calls the merchant's checkout interface in a standardized way, while the merchant retains full commercial and legal control. ACP enables merchants to enter the AI shopping ecosystem without modifying their systems through structured orders (JSON Schema / OpenAPI), secure payment tokens (Stripe Shared Payment Token), compatibility with existing e-commerce backends, and support for REST and MCP publishing capabilities. Currently, ACP is used in ChatGPT Instant Checkout, becoming an early-deployable payment infrastructure. Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) – Digital Authorization and Payment Instruction Protocol (Google) AP2 is an open standard jointly launched by Google and several payment networks and technology companies, aiming to establish a unified, compliant, and auditable process for AI Agent-led payments. It binds a user's payment intent, authorization scope, and compliance identity through cryptographically signed digital authorization credentials, providing merchants, payment institutions, and regulators with verifiable evidence of "who is spending money for whom." AP2 is designed with "Payment-Agnostic" principles, supporting credit cards, bank transfers, real-time payments, and access to crypto payment channels such as stablecoins via extensions like x402. Within the entire Agentic Commerce protocol stack, AP2 does not handle specific product or order details; instead, it provides a universal agent payment authorization framework for various payment channels.

ERC-8004 – On-Chain Agent Identity/Reputation/Verification Standard (Ethereum)
ERC-8004 is an Ethereum standard jointly proposed by MetaMask, the Ethereum Foundation, Google, and Coinbase. It aims to build a cross-platform, verifiable, and trustless identity and reputation system for AI agents. The protocol consists of three on-chain parts:
Identity Registry: For each Agent Forging on-chain identities similar to NFTs allows for linking to cross-platform information such as MCP/A2A endpoints, ENS/DID, and wallets. Reputation Registry: Standardizes and records scores, feedback, and behavioral signals, making the Agent's historical performance auditable, aggregateable, and composable. Validation Registry: Supports verification mechanisms such as stake re-execution, zkML, and TEE, providing verifiable execution records for high-value tasks. Through ERC-8004, the Agent's identity, reputation, and behavior are stored on-chain, forming a cross-platform discoverable, tamper-proof, and verifiable trust foundation, a crucial infrastructure for building an open and trustworthy AI economy in Web3. ERC-8004 is currently in the review stage, meaning the standard is largely stable and feasible, but is still widely soliciting community opinions and has not yet been finalized. x402 – Stablecoin Native API Payment Track (Coinbase) x402 is an open payment standard (Apache-2.0) proposed by Coinbase. It transforms the long-dormant HTTP 402 Payment Required into a programmable on-chain payment handshake mechanism, enabling APIs and AI Agents to achieve accountless, frictionless, and on-demand on-chain settlements without the need for accounts, credit cards, or API keys.

Illustration: HTTP 402 payment workflow. Source: Jay Yu@Pantera Capital

IV. Representative Projects in the Web3 Agentic Commerce Ecosystem
The current Web3 ecosystem for agentic commerce can be divided into three layers:
The business payment system layer (L3), including projects such as Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, and Nevermined, provides payment encapsulation and SDKs.
Integration, quota and permission governance, human approval and compliant access, and varying degrees of connection with traditional financial tracks (banks, card organizations, PSPs, KYC/KYB) build a bridge between payment services and the machine economy. The native payment protocol layer (L2), composed of protocols such as x402 and Virtual ACP and their ecosystem projects, is responsible for fee requests, payment verification, and on-chain settlement. It is the core of the current Agent economy, truly achieving automation and end-to-end clearing. x402 is completely independent of banks, card organizations, and payment service providers, providing native on-chain M2M/A2A payment capabilities. The infrastructure layer (L1), including Ethereum, Base, Solana, and Kite AI, provides a trusted technical foundation for the payment and identity system, including an on-chain execution environment, key system, MPC/AA, and permission runtime.

L3 Business Payment System Layer - Skyfire: Identity and Payment Credentials for AI Agents
Skyfire, with KYA + Pay at its core, abstracts "identity verification + payment authorization" into AI-usable JWT credentials, providing verifiable automated access and deduction capabilities for websites, APIs, and MCP services. The system automatically generates Buyer/Seller Agents and escrow wallets for users, supporting card, bank, and USDC top-ups.

Skyfire, with KYA + Pay at its core, abstracts "identity verification + payment authorization" into JWT credentials usable by AI, providing verifiable automated access and deduction capabilities for websites, APIs, and MCP services. The system automatically generates Buyer/Seller Agents and escrow wallets for users, supporting card, bank, and USDC top-ups.
L3 Business Payment System Layer - Catena Labs: Agent Identity / Payment Standard
Catena uses AI-Native financial institutions (custodian, clearing, risk control, KYA) as its business layer and ACK (Agent Commerce Kit) as its standard layer to build a unified identity protocol (ACK-ID) and an agent-native payment protocol (ACK-Pay) for agents. The goal is to fill the gaps in the machine economy regarding verifiable identity, authorization chains, and automated payment standards.
ACK-ID establishes the agent's ownership chain and authorization chain based on DID/VC; ACK-Pay defines payment requests and verifiable receipt formats decoupled from the underlying settlement network (USDC, banks, Arc). Catena emphasizes long-term cross-ecosystem interoperability, and its role is closer to the "TLS/EMV layer of the agent economy," with strong standardization and a clear vision.
Catena uses AI-Native financial institutions (custodian, clearing, risk control, KYA) as its business layer and ACK (Agent Commerce Kit) as its standard layer.
...
L3 Business Payment System Layer - Nevermined: Metering, Billing, and Micropayment Settlement
Nevermined focuses on a usage-based AI economic model, providing Access Control, Metering, Credits System, and Usage Logs for automated metering, pay-per-use billing, revenue sharing, and auditing. Users can top up credits via Stripe or USDC, and the system automatically verifies usage, deducts fees, and generates auditable logs with each API call.
Its core value lies in supporting sub-cent real-time micropayments and Agent-to-Agent automated settlement, enabling data purchases, API calls, workflow scheduling, etc., to operate on a "pay-per-use" basis. Nevermined does not build a new payment track, but rather a metering/billing layer on top of payments: in the short term, it drives the commercialization of AI SaaS; in the medium term, it supports the A2A marketplace; and in the long term, it may become the micropayment fabric for the machine economy.
Nevermined focuses on a usage-based AI economic model, providing access control, metering, credits system, and usage logs for automated metering, pay-per-use billing, revenue sharing, and auditing.
Its core value lies in supporting sub-cent real-time micropayments and Agent-to-Agent automated settlement, enabling data purchases, API calls, workflow scheduling, etc., to operate on a "pay-per-use" basis.
... Skyfire, Payman, Catena Labs, and Nevermined belong to the business payment layer and all need to connect with banks, card organizations, PSPs, and KYC/KYB to varying degrees. However, their true value lies not in "accessing fiat currency," but in solving machine-native needs that traditional finance cannot cover—identity mapping, permission governance, programmatic risk control, and pay-per-use billing. Skyfire (Payment Gateway): Provides "identity + automatic deduction" for websites/APIs (on-chain identity mapping to Web2 identity)
Payman (Financial Governance): For internal enterprise policies, limits, permissions, and approvals (AI can spend money but not overstep authority)
Catena Labs (Financial Infrastructure): Integrates with the banking system, built through KYA, custody, and clearing services (AI compliant bank)
Nevermined (Cashier): Only performs measurement and billing above payments; payments rely on Stripe/USDC. In contrast, x402 operates at a lower level and is the only native on-chain payment protocol that does not rely on banks, card organizations, or PSPs. It can directly complete on-chain deductions and settlements through 402 workflows. Upper-layer systems such as Skyfire, Payman, and Nevermined can all use x402 as a settlement track, thus providing agents with a truly automated M2M/A2A native payment closed loop. L2 Native Payment Protocol Layer - x402 Ecosystem: From Client to On-Chain Settlement The x402 native payment ecosystem can be divided into four layers: Client, Server, Facilitators, and Blockchain Settlement Layer. The client is responsible for initiating payment requests through the Agent or application; the server provides API services such as data, inference, or storage to the Agent on a per-transaction basis; the payment execution layer completes on-chain deduction, verification, and settlement, and is the core execution engine of the entire process; the blockchain settlement layer is responsible for the final token deduction and on-chain confirmation, realizing tamper-proof payment.

Legend: X402 Payment Flow Source: x402 White Paper
Client-Side Integrations / The Payers: Enables the Agent or application to initiate x402 payment requests and is the "starting point" of the entire payment process.
Client-Side Integrations / The Payers: Enables the Agent or application to initiate x402 payment requests and is the "starting point" of the entire payment process.
Representative Projects: ThirdWeb Client SDK – The most commonly used x402 client standard in the ecosystem, actively maintained, supports multiple chains, and is the default tool for developers integrating x402. Nuwa AI – Enables AI to directly access x402 services without coding, a representative project of the "Agent payment gateway." The official website also lists Axios/Fetch, Mogami Java SDK, Tweazy, etc., which are still early clients. Currently, existing clients are still in the "SDK era," essentially developer tools. More advanced clients, such as browser/OS clients, robot/IoT clients, enterprise systems, or those capable of managing multiple wallets/facilitators, have not yet emerged. Server-side / API Sellers (Services / Endpoints / The Sellers): Sell data, storage, or inference services to Agents on a per-use basis. Some representative projects include: AIsa — Provides API call and settlement infrastructure for real-world AI Agents, enabling them to access data, content, computing power, and third-party services by call, token, or quantity. Currently, x402 has the highest call volume. Firecrawl — The most frequently consumed web page parsing and structured crawling entry point for AI Agents. Pinata — A mainstream Web3 storage infrastructure; x402 already covers the actual underlying storage costs of non-lightweight APIs. Gloria AI – Provides high-frequency real-time news and structured market signals, serving as an intelligence source for trading and analytical agents. AEON – Extends x402 + USDC to online and offline merchant acquiring in Southeast Asia/Latin America/Africa, reaching 50M merchants. Neynar – Farcaster social graph infrastructure, opening up social data to agents via x402. Currently, the server-side focuses on crawling/storage/news APIs. The more advanced key layers—financial transaction execution APIs, advertising APIs, Web2 SaaS gateways, and even APIs for executing real-world tasks—are almost entirely undeveloped, representing the most promising growth curve for the future. Payment Execution Layer (Facilitators / The Processors): Completes on-chain deductions, verification, and settlement. It is the core execution engine of x402. Representative projects include: Coinbase Facilitator (CDP) – An enterprise-grade trusted executor with zero fees on the Base mainnet and built-in OFAC/KYT, making it the strongest choice for production environments. PayAI Facilitator – The execution layer project with the widest multi-chain coverage and fastest growth (Solana, Polygon, Base, Avalanche, etc.), and the most widely used multi-chain facilitator in the ecosystem. Daydreams—a high-scenario project combining payment execution with LLM inference routing—is currently the fastest-growing "AI inference payment executor" and is becoming the third pillar of the x402 ecosystem. According to x402scan data from the past 30 days, there are also a number of mid-to-long-tail Facilitators/Routers, including Dexter, Virtuals Protocol, OpenX402, CodeNut, Heurist, Thirdweb, x402.rs, Mogami, and Questflow, whose overall transaction volume, number of sellers, and number of buyers are significantly lower than the top three. Blockchain Settlement Layer: The final point of contact in the x402 payment workflow, responsible for completing the actual deduction of tokens and on-chain confirmation. Although the x402 protocol itself is Chain-Agnostic, current ecosystem data shows that settlement is primarily concentrated on two networks: Base – promoted by the official CDP Facilitator, native to USDC, with stable fees, and currently the settlement network with the largest transaction volume and number of sellers. Solana – heavily supported by multi-chain Facilitators such as PayAI, and boasting high throughput and low latency, it is experiencing the fastest growth in high-frequency inference and real-time API scenarios. The chain itself does not participate in payment logic; as more Facilitators expand, the x402 settlement layer will exhibit a stronger multi-chain trend. In the x402 payment system, the Facilitator is the only role that truly executes on-chain payments, and is closest to "protocol-level revenue": responsible for verifying payment authorization, submitting and tracking on-chain transactions, generating auditable settlement proofs, and handling replay, timeout, multi-chain compatibility, and basic compliance checks. Unlike the Client SDK (Payers) and API server (Sellers) that only handle HTTP requests, the Facilitator controls the traffic entry point and settlement fee rights, thus placing it at the core of value capture in the Agent economy and attracting the most market attention. However, in reality, most projects remain in the testnet or small-scale demo stage, essentially just lightweight "payment executors." They lack competitive advantages in key capabilities such as identity verification, billing, risk control, and multi-chain stable operation, exhibiting clear characteristics of low barriers to entry and high homogeneity. As the ecosystem matures, Coinbase-backed facilitators with stability and compliance advantages do have a significant first-mover advantage. However, as CDP facilitators begin charging fees, and other facilitators may explore different monetization models, the overall market structure and share distribution still have considerable room for evolution. In the long run, x402 remains at the interface layer and cannot carry core value. The truly sustainable competitive advantage lies in comprehensive platforms that can build identity verification, billing, risk control, and compliance systems on top of settlement capabilities. L2 Native Payment Protocol Layer - Virtual Agent Commerce Protocol (ACP) provides a universal standard for business interaction for autonomous AI. Through a four-stage process of Request → Negotiation → Transaction → Evaluation, it enables independent intelligent agents to securely and verifiably request services, negotiate terms, complete transactions, and undergo quality assessment. ACP uses blockchain as a trusted execution layer to ensure the interaction process is auditable and tamper-proof. By introducing Evaluator Agents, it establishes an incentive-driven reputation system, enabling heterogeneous and independent professional agents to form "autonomous business entities" and conduct sustainable economic activities without centralized coordination. Currently, ACP has moved beyond its early experimental stage and has achieved a preliminary ecosystem scale, extending beyond the exploration of "multi-agent business interaction standards." L1 Infrastructure Layer - Emerging / Vertical Agent Native Payment Chain
Mainstream general-purpose public chains such as Ethereum, Base (EVM), and Solana provide agents with the core execution environment, account system, state machine, security, and settlement foundation, possessing mature account models, stablecoin ecosystems, and a broad developer base.
Kite AI is a representative "Agent Native L1" infrastructure, specifically designed for intelligent agents to provide the underlying execution environment for payment, identity, and permissions. Its core is based on the SPACE framework (stablecoin native, programmable constraints, agent priority authentication, compliance auditing, and economically feasible micropayments), and achieves fine-grained risk isolation through a three-layer key system of Root→Agent→Session; combined with optimized state channels to build an "Agent Native Payment Railway," it reduces costs to $0.000001 and controls latency to the hundreds of milliseconds level, making API-level high-frequency micropayments feasible.
As a general execution layer, Kite is upward compatible with x402, Google A2A, and Anthropic MCP, and backward compatible with OAuth 2.1, aiming to become a unified agent payment and identity foundation connecting Web2 and Web3. AIsaNet integrates x402 and L402 (Lightning Labs' 402 payment protocol standard based on the Lightning Network) protocols, serving as a micro-payment and settlement layer for AI agents. It supports high-frequency transactions, cross-protocol call coordination, settlement path selection, and transaction routing, enabling agents to complete cross-service and cross-chain automatic payments without needing to understand the underlying complexities. V. Summary and Outlook: From Payment Protocols to the Reconstruction of Machine Economic Order Agentic Commerce is the establishment of a completely new economic order dominated by machines. It's not as simple as "AI automatically placing orders," but a complete reconstruction of the entire cross-entity chain: how services are discovered, how trust is established, how orders are expressed, how permissions are authorized, how value is settled, and who bears the responsibility for disputes. The emergence of A2A, MCP, ACP, AP2, ERC-8004, and x402 standardizes the "business closed loop between machines." Following this evolutionary path, future payment infrastructure will diverge into two parallel tracks: one is a business governance track based on traditional fiat currency logic, and the other is a native settlement track based on the x402 protocol. The value capture logic between these two is different. 1. Business Governance Track: Web3 Business Payment System Layer Applicable Scenarios: Low-frequency, non-micro-payment real-world transactions (such as procurement, SaaS subscriptions, physical e-commerce). The core logic is as follows: Traditional fiat currency will dominate the market for the long term. Agents are merely smarter front-end and process coordinators, not replacements for Stripe/card organizations/bank transfers. The major obstacles to stablecoins entering the real-world business world on a large scale are regulation and taxation. The value of projects like Skyfire, Payman, and Catena Labs lies not in the underlying payment routing (usually handled by Stripe/Circle), but in their "Governance-as-a-Service" (GAS) services. This addresses machine-native needs that traditional finance cannot cover—identity mapping, permission governance, programmatic risk control, accountability, and M2M/A2A micropayments (settled per token/second). The key is who can become the trusted "AI financial manager" for enterprises. 2. Native Settlement Track: The x402 Protocol Ecosystem and the Final Struggle of Facilitator Applicable Scenarios: High-frequency, micro-payments, M2M/A2A digital native transactions (API billing, resource flow payments). Core Logic: As an open standard, x402 achieves atomic binding of payments and resources through the HTTP 402 status code. In programmable micro-payments and M2M/A2A scenarios, x402 currently boasts the most complete ecosystem and the most advanced deployment (native HTTP + on-chain settlement), and its position in the Agent economy is expected to be comparable to 'Stripe for agents'. Simply integrating x402 on the Client or Service side does not bring a premium to the market; the real growth potential lies in upper-layer assets that can accumulate long-term repeat purchases and high-frequency calls, such as OS-level Agent clients, bot/IoT wallets, and high-value API services (market data, GPU inference, real-world task execution, etc.). Facilitator, the protocol gateway that assists the Client and Server in completing payment handshakes, invoice generation, and fund clearing, controls both traffic and settlement fees, and is currently the core of the x402 Stack. This is the link closest to "revenue." Most facilitators are essentially just "payment executors," characterized by low barriers to entry and homogeneity. Giants with advantages in usability and compliance (such as Coinbase) dominate the market. The core value to avoid marginalization will shift to the "Facilitator + X" service layer: providing high-margin capabilities such as arbitration, risk control, and vault management by building a verifiable service catalog and reputation system. We believe that in the future, a "dual-track system" of "fiat currency" and "stablecoin" will emerge: the former supporting mainstream human commerce, and the latter carrying out high-frequency, cross-border, and micro-payment scenarios native to machines and on-chain. The role of Web3 is not to replace traditional payments, but to provide the underlying capabilities for verifiable identity, programmable clearing, and global stablecoins in the Agent era. Ultimately, Agentic Commerce is not limited to payment optimization, but rather a restructuring of the machine-based economic order. When billions of microtransactions are automatically completed by agents in the background, the protocols and companies that first provide trust, coordination, and optimization capabilities will become the core force of the next generation of global commercial infrastructure.