Media Guild - When Software Pays: x402 and the Cultural Shift of the Agentic Web
As AI agents become autonomous actors on the internet, a quiet shift is happening:
software is no longer just executing code — it is participating economically.
x402 revives a long-ignored part of the web: HTTP 402 — Payment Required.
Not as a billing feature, but as a cultural statement — access has a price, by default.
In this episode, we sit down with Rish from Solana to explore what happens when payments become a native behavior of the internet — especially in a world where machines act, decide, and transact on our behalf.
We explore:
- Why subscriptions, API keys, and paywalls are cultural artifacts — not technical necessities
- What changes when software becomes a paying user of the web
- How x402 reframes power between platforms, builders, and users
- Why Solana enables real-time, low-friction machine-to-machine commerce
- The behavioral shift from permission-based access to usage-based economics
- What this means for creators, developers, and protocols in an agent-driven internet
Not a conversation about payments, but about who the internet is built for next.
Rish (@_rishinsharma) — Solana
Hosted by Lukas Hüttis (@lukashuettis) and Arikia Millikan (@arikia)