Who Pays the Agent? (Keyrock x Coinbase Report)
Research report analyzing on-chain AI-agent payments, finding agents settled roughly $73M across about 176M transactions over twelve months with USDC dominant.
Overview
'Who Pays the Agent?' is a research report from Keyrock produced with Coinbase, Tempo, and Virtuals Protocol, analyzing on-chain AI-agent payment activity from roughly May 2025 to April 2026. Its headline findings (as reported by the authors and covered by CoinDesk and others): AI agents settled over $73M across ~176M on-chain transactions, with USDC accounting for ~98.6% of usage and average transaction sizes around $0.31-$0.48. The report flags concentration risk from heavy reliance on a single stablecoin. These figures are the report's own findings, presented as reported, not independently verified.
Observed record — 57 daily checks since 2026-07-14
- Succeeded
- 9
- Failed
- 48
- Their error
- 0
- Unattributed
- 48
State changed on 2026-07-15 (responding → unclear), 2026-09-01 (unclear → responding).
This is the share of our daily checks that succeeded — not an availability guarantee. A check can fail because the host was down, because our runner timed out, or because the network in between dropped it, and only the first of those is a fact about this project. Failures are split by what we can attribute; anything we cannot attribute is counted, not hidden. 49 of these checks predate 2026-09-01, when the probe counted a bot-block (HTTP 403) as a failure and recorded no reason for any failure. Rates spanning that date mix two definitions. Since then: 100%.
Details
- Chains
- Multichain
- Open source
- Unknown
- Pricing
- Free
- Last checked
- 2026-09-08
Marketplace Signals
No marketplace signals recorded for this resource yet.
Verification status reflects evidence reviewed by Sato Hub. Self-reported claims are never presented as verified.
Where Who Pays the Agent? (Keyrock x Coinbase Report) fits
Related concepts: How Agents Use Wallets, What Are Onchain Agents?
Listing History
Recorded changes to Who Pays the Agent? (Keyrock x Coinbase Report)'s listing — status, verification, Sato Score, and recent releases. Full history is kept in the listing record.
- Jun 25, 2026Auto-enriched: tags
- Jun 25, 2026Enriched: tags
- Jun 25, 2026Auto-enriched: creator profile url
- Jun 14, 2026Enriched: creator name
- Jun 11, 2026Sato Hub began tracking this listing
Related Resources
Coinbase AgentKit
ActiveCoinbase's toolkit for giving AI agents wallets and the ability to take onchain actions.
Virtuals Protocol
ActiveLaunchpad and protocol for creating and tokenizing AI agents, primarily on Base.
Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
ActiveOpen protocol from Google for secure agent-led payments across traditional and crypto rails, with a crypto-native x402 extension built with Coinbase, Ethereum Foundation, and MetaMask.
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Sato Hub. "Who Pays the Agent? (Keyrock x Coinbase Report) — Sato Hub." Sato Hub, updated 2026-09-08, accessed 2026-09-08. https://satohub.ai/resources/keyrock-coinbase-who-pays-the-agent-reportThis page is refreshed daily. Citations include the date so a reader can tell which snapshot a claim came from.
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