x402 solves the internet's original sin: advertising

Article author:0xaryan Article compilation：Block unicorn

For decades, online advertising has been the only way for the internet to stay vibrant.

Everyone is competing for attention. To do this, companies collect all possible data around you, create a user profile, and show you ads. Proxy Networks and Original Sin On the internet, this single model unlocked a market that is currently worth trillions of dollars.

Finance has always existed on the internet:

• Working with payment providers

• Putting up a paywall for your site

• Or showing ads

However, micropayments (<$1) are not economically viable (Visa/Mastercard) leaf="">charges about 2% + $0.10 per transaction), so advertising is the only model:

• Users have free access to tons of content

• Advertisers get targeted users for their products

• Content publishers get paid for their content

It's a win-win for everyone.

As the world moves towards proxies:

• Agencies become consumers of content rather than humans by becoming middlemen

• advertisers can no longer target ads to humans, and the advertising economics will collapse.

• Proxies will now either steal (scrape) content or buy it

• APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) will become the default mode of communication instead of browser proxies/proxy browsers.

User’s Path

It will be economically unviable for the internet to scrape or steal content, so

Publishers will turn to charging micropayments for their sites, and agencies will need a way to pay them, and for decades, micropayments were impossible before the advent of blockchain.

Blockchains like Solanaenable micropayments at scale without preying on users. x402 is a standard built on the 402 standard, creating a unified interface for: Consumers paying for content Publishers collecting fees for content Eliminating the need for a middleman (Visa/Mastercard) Enabling proxy micropayments.

Source: payai.network

Any client (proxy/browser) sends a request to access content, the content host responds and asks for payment for the content, the client processes the payment and gains access to the content, thus opening a new economy for the proxy internet.

What use cases I'm excited about:

• Gas-free user experience ... x402 browsers: Someone should fork Crromium and embed x402 into the browser itself, Brave actually should do so as they have a good reputation in crypto, already have a wallet and support IPFS by default, and in my opinion they are the closest to being able to do this.

• On-chain marketplaces:Like traditional markets, there are discoverability issues, and 

• On-chain marketplaces:Like traditional markets, there are discoverability issues, and 

• On-chain marketplaces:Like traditional markets, there are discoverability issues, and 

• On-chain marketplaces:Like traditional markets, there are discoverability issues, and 

• On-chain marketplaces:Like traditional markets, there are discoverability issues, and 

This problem was solved by introducing bazaars (market in Hindi), but these are bazaars maintained off-chain and will always be subject to some restrictions. Someone should create an on-chain directory where anyone can add what they are selling (APIs, newsletters, books, etc.) and embed ratings in the directory, just like OpenRouter did with the model.

• Skip Ads:Like any technology, it will take time for the world to adopt x402, and in the meantime, being able to skip ads by making micropayments is a great natural

  evolution for x402. You set a preferred spending limit per day, visit YouTube, and the x402 browser automatically skips ads for you and pays advertisers. I'm always amazed at how a simple technology can unlock new economies, and x402 is one of them.