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Agents Can Pay. Now Let Them Think: x402 x SQD x Rezolve Ai

mojo

• 3 min read

x402 turns requests into revenue. SQD turns blockchains into facts. Rezolve turns all of it into enterprise-ready commerce.

Crypto Twitter just rediscovered an old status code with a new superpower: HTTP 402 Payment Required - now popularized as x402. In plain English: an API can return a 402 “paywall,” accept a digital payment, then fulfill the same request - no accounts, no OAuth, no API keys required by the payment protocol.

That’s a big unlock for AI agents. Agents don’t want subscriptions; they want to buy one thing, right now, and move on.

But payments are the easy part. The harder - and more valuable - problem is what to pay for. As the UI/model edge compresses, the advantage shifts to data at inference time: fresh, reliable, machine-readable facts. The richest signal for that is often on-chain activity - transparent and high-stakes - but huge, fragmented, and hard to retrieve.

That’s where SQD comes in. We’ve spent years organizing multi-chain data - evolving from a raw lake toward a lake+warehouse experience built for agents.

And with Rezolve Ai acquiring Subsquid - days after acquiring Smartpay - the stack snaps into place:

Data (SQD) for on-chain facts, Payments (x402 + Smartpay) for instant digital-asset settlement, and Intelligence (Rezolve Ai/Brain Suite) for enterprise orchestration. Smartpay processed more than $1B in the twelve months ending Sept 30, 2025, giving our 402-priced endpoints real-world rails from day one.

Rezolve publicly calls this the architecture for the “age of agentic commerce.”

What x402 does (and why agents care)

  • API receives a request.
  • If unpaid, server replies 402 with price + payment instructions.
  • Client (human or agent) pays in digital dollars.
  • Client retries the same request.
  • Server verifies payment via a facilitator and returns the result.

It’s the web being the web—now with per-request pricing. Think: $0.01 for a fact, $0.10 for a bundle, $1.00 for a deep trace (illustrative pricing).

What SQD could sell per request: facts at inference time

You don’t need more “data.” You need facts: structured, trustworthy, instantly retrievable. Examples of potential 402-priced units:

  • Open Token Facts - canonical, machine-readable facts about a token/project/issuer.
  • Traces - N-hop transaction traces for a contract or address over a time/block window.
  • RAG Packs - pre-structured bundles (e.g., last 100 swaps, governance votes, bridge events) tuned for retrieval-augmented generation.
  • Risk Signals - rolling anomaly flags (MEV proximity, mixer adjacency, exploit clustering).
  • Social <> On-Chain Joins - snapshots that connect identity graphs (e.g., Farcaster/ENS) to on-chain activity.

Each unit is a clean pay-per-request primitive - easy to meter and compose. (Exploratory; subject to change.)

Why this can beat subscriptions - especially for agents

  • Low friction: No keys to issue, rotate, or leak.
  • Cost = value: Pay only for the facts you retrieve.
  • Composable: Agents mix multiple 402-speaking providers.
  • Enterprise path: With Rezolve’s commerce/AI capabilities, there’s a potential route to reporting, reconciliation, and policy guardrails - pending evaluation and approvals.

From Idea to Distribution: Where Rezolve May Fit

  • Payments/checkout capabilities at enterprise scale.
  • AI/commerce orchestration to put paid facts into workflows (search, recommendations, conversations, checkout).
  • Channels and compliance appropriate for larger teams.

These are potential alignments; they are not confirmations of current availability.

What This Unlocks for Builders (illustrative examples)

  • LLM copilot for tokens: “What changed on-chain in the last 24 hours for $XYZ?” 
    • Buys a RAG Pack, returns a brief with trace citations.
  • Risk agent: “Is this address trending toward mixer adjacency?” 
    • Buys Risk Signals + Trace Slice, outputs probability + rationale.
  • Growth analytics: “Show Farcaster uptake for projects crossing $10M TVL.” 
    • Buys Social <> On-Chain Joins per project.
  • Trader automation: “Alert me if governance voters overlap with deployer clusters.” 
    • Pays per fact bundle, triggers downstream hooks.

All examples are illustrative and exploratory.

The Takeaway

x402 lets agents pay per request. SQD makes the request worth it with facts. Rezolve provides a path to enterprise-grade commerce and orchestration.

This post describes concepts we’re exploring, not a commitment to deliverables or timelines. If you’re building agentic workflows and want to kick the tires on per-fact pricing, get in touch - we’re prioritizing conversations with teams who’ll pressure-test the idea.

This article contains forward-looking statements regarding potential product directions. It does not constitute a commitment to deliver features, integrations, or timelines. Availability and scope, if any, will be determined following internal and partner reviews.