The x402 payment ecosystem is迎来 its "Taobao moment".

Written by: Yue Xiaoyu

1. What is the most important thing in creating a payment ecosystem?

In fact, it is a merchant ecosystem, which means that it is necessary to enrich the supply side first in order to attract more demand.

The emergence of Alipay is analogous to the creation of the Taobao platform, which was built to solve payment problems.

In other words, electronic payments have rapidly become popular due to the emergence and prosperity of e-commerce platforms.

The popularity of Alipay is not due to advanced technology, but because the merchant ecosystem of Taobao (supply) has driven demand.

2. AI native payment also faces the cold start problem.

The previously popular x402 is a very simple and pure AI-native payment protocol that primarily addresses the issue of AI payments.

x402 is actually facing the same problems in developing the ecosystem as when electronic payments first emerged: Where is the market? Who are the merchants? Who will supply the goods?

Now, the largest seller has emerged in the x402 payment ecosystem, the decentralized data provider Switchboard.

Switchboard is an oracle and currently the first and only decentralized data source in the x402 ecosystem that supports pay-per-use access.

In simple terms, x402 allows AI Agents to easily purchase data, and Switchboard is the seller of high-quality, real-time data, utilizing x402 to collect micropayments.

3. Switchboard is the “Taobao Moment” of the x402 payment ecosystem!

Just like Taobao gathers a vast number of merchants, Switchboard first provides rich and reliable paid data supply to attract the first batch of AI Agent testing.

Switchboard uses x402 to list all data sources for sale: AI Agent sends a request → server returns 402 → Agent automatically pays on-chain → instantly receives data.

This forms a flywheel: The supply of Switchboard attracts AI Agents (demand) → Increased trading volume → More sellers follow x402 → Ecosystem thrives.

4. The payment ecosystem must prioritize supply first!

To create a payment ecosystem, we need to first build Taobao, enrich merchants, and activate supply.

x402 + Switchboard is actually a perfect replica of Alipay + Taobao: the protocol provides tools for the supply side (data sellers) to offer to the market.

a16z estimates that the market will reach $30 T at x402, and Switchboard, as a pioneer data market, has the opportunity to capture a significant share of the data layer.

We can continuously pay attention to the latest developments of the x402 ecosystem.