Alchemy launches USDC payment system for autonomous AI agents
Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy has launched a system that allows autonomous AI agents to purchase account credits and access its blockchain data services using onchain wallets and USDC on Base.
According to the company's announcement, the initial release will allow AI agents to directly query blockchain networks, verify ownership of non-fungible tokens (NFT), view wallet accounts across multiple chains, and access services planned with additional networks and services.
If an agent exhausts their prepaid account credit, Alchemy issues a payment request, which can be settled directly on the USDC Base, allowing the agent to continue working without human intervention.
The company says agents can top up accounts with as little as $1 in USDC, and once registered, continue making API calls until the balance runs low and another automatic payment is needed.
The system uses Coinbase's x402 payment status to convert an HTTP “402 Payment Required” response into an automatic billing trigger. x402 is an open standard that allows web services to request onchain payments directly via HTTP responses, enabling manual receipt of machine-to-machine transactions.
Alchemy CEO Nikhil Viswanathan told Cointelegraph that the system is aimed at developers building autonomous decentralized finance (DeFi) agents, portfolio management bots and other multi-tiered onchain workflows.
Several major crypto apps, including Robinhood Crypto, Uniswap, Opensea, Ave and 0x, already rely on Alchemy to power transactions, he said.
Now AI agents can access that same infrastructure autonomously without human intervention. It is at this moment that the agent economy finds its key.
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Crypto companies and developers accelerate agent adoption.
AI agents, software systems that make decisions and perform tasks autonomously based on predefined goals and real-time data, have attracted growing attention over the past year. Nearly a quarter (23%) of organizations surveyed by McKinsey in November said they are expanding their use of agent-based systems.
In the year
A few days later, Coinbase introduced “Agentic Wallet”, a crypto wallet infrastructure designed to allow AI agents to autonomously mine, acquire and trade digital assets, including managing onchain transactions such as DeFi spaces, balancing portfolios and paying for services.
Meanwhile, the Monad developer community announced the results of the Multiverse Hackathon this week, naming 16 winners in various “Proxy + Token” projects.
The winners include a programmable venture capital agent that automatically evaluates and invests, AI-driven multiplayer battlegrounds, a dating network where agents “represent humans,” and trading card games run by software instead of human players.
Magazine: Crypto Loves Clawdbot/Moltbot, Uber Ratings for AI Agents: AI Eye
