HTTP 402 and Micropayments: A Code That Slept for Three Decades Awakens in the AI Era

Text | Jordan, Co-founder of AIsa

Introduction: A Line of Code That Slept for Thirty Years

In 1996, at the University of California, Irvine.

In the laboratory, the light was dim. The young Roy Fielding and his colleagues were burying their heads in writing a document that was destined to rewrite the world - the HTTP/1.1 protocol. It defined how browsers communicate with servers, determined how web pages are loaded, how pictures are transmitted, and how forms are submitted. It can be said that without it, there would be no World Wide Web today.

But among these boring terms, they buried an unusual "Easter egg":

HTTP 402 – Payment Required.

In their vision, the future Internet would not need to fill pages with ads, nor would users need to pay for annual subscriptions. Instead, users could pay for what they really needed - an article, a photo, or even a data field. The browser would automatically complete the settlement of a few cents in the background, and the access and payment would be seamlessly connected, as natural as a TCP/IP handshake.

However, this vision was ultimately buried by the times. In the real 1990s, there were no economic or technological conditions for it to take root. As expected, for thirty years, HTTP 402 was hardly ever truly enabled and just slept lonely in the protocol.

Thirty years ago, it was a doomed-to-fail vision;

Thirty years later, it has become a proposition that is being re - questioned in the AI era.

The Inevitable Failure - The "Three Big Mountains" in the 1990s

Let's go back to 1998.

Jack used Netscape Navigator to open The New York Times on a dial - up network. The gray progress bar on the screen crept slowly, and the modem made a shrill beeping sound. Finally, the page loaded. But just when he read the second paragraph, a prompt popped up - "Payment Required: Please pay $0.05 to continue reading."

Jack hesitated for a moment and still clicked "Confirm". But he found that he had to enter his credit card number and wait for dozens of seconds. Eventually, the payment amount was close to 35 cents. By the time the page refreshed, his patience had run out. He directly closed the web page and turned to another free portal website.

This is exactly the dilemma that HTTP 402 was doomed to face in the 1990s and could not be implemented. It was not that it was not advanced enough, but that from the very beginning, it hit three "big mountains" that could not be crossed.

The First Big Mountain: The Iron Law of Economics.

The transaction cost theory of economist Ronald Coase has long pointed out that whether a transaction can be established depends on whether the cost is lower than the benefit. HTTP 402 envisioned "buying an article for 5 cents". But in the era dominated by credit cards, the fixed handling fee for each transaction was about 25 - 35 cents. In other words, for 5 - cent content, users had to spend 35 cents. The transaction cost was six times the transaction amount. This logic was naturally "unfeasible" in economics.

The Second Big Mountain: The Fragmented Experience.

The charm of the Internet lies in "instantaneity", while HTTP 402 brought fragmented pauses. Every click might pop up a payment window, and every payment required entering the card number and waiting for the dial - up network. More importantly, it made users frequently make the decision of "whether to pay for this content" without any preparation. In psychology, this is called decision fatigue. Users would soon choose to give up. In contrast, although ads are crude and subscriptions are clumsy, they at least keep the experience continuous.

The Third Big Mountain: The Technological Gap.

HTTP 402 reserved a door in the protocol, but it led nowhere. Browsers did not have built - in wallets, websites lacked unified payment interfaces, and payment gateways did not have large - scale solutions. Microsoft launched "MSN Micropayments" in 1999, trying to promote instant payment for single articles. But due to the lack of ecological support, it died silently two years later. Early electronic currency attempts such as DigiCash were also isolated and helpless due to the lack of standards and compatibility.

When the vision of 402 was crushed by the "three big mountains", another path unexpectedly succeeded: the advertising model.

The most "great" and also the most "original sin" business logic of the Internet - users are free, and advertisers pay. The entire Internet began to revolve around the "attention economy":

• Users enjoy a vast amount of free content;
• Content providers gain revenue through ads;
• Advertisers can reach audiences that were originally unreachable at a very low cost.

This was a victory of economies of scale, but it also buried long - term hidden dangers. As someone said: "Advertising is the original sin of the Internet." We replaced the possibility of micropayments with users' attention.

In the 1990s, HTTP 402 was doomed to fail.

Economically, the transaction cost was higher than the transaction amount;

In terms of experience, the fragmented interaction was unacceptable;

Technologically, there was a lack of infrastructure support.

It was an advanced seed, but it fell on barren soil. The Internet finally chose advertising and subscriptions instead of micropayments.

But the arrival of the AI era has turned the story around. After all, advertising needs attention, while AI has no attention.

AI Tears Open the Payment Boundary

If HTTP 402 was like a seed that fell in the wrong era in the 1990s, then thirty years later, the arrival of AI is like a sudden storm that has changed the climate and rewritten the soil.

In the past, when you searched for "HTTP 402", you would click on a dozen web pages that relied on ads to survive. Today, with just one question, AI can directly generate a complete answer on the screen. There is no clicking, no ads, and no advertisers paying. For users, this is extremely convenient; for content providers, it is a cliff - like fall. This is why by 2024, one - third of the world's top ten thousand websites have simply blocked AI crawlers, trying to hold on to the last bottom line of value.

The collapse of the advertising model is not accidental but is directly penetrated by AI's consumption logic.

The First Change: Atomic Consumption.

Human consumption habits are "packaged" - subscribing to a monthly membership, buying a whole book. This is to reduce the decision - making burden. The advertising model relies on this: giving away content for free and selling attention to advertisers.

But AI has no "attention" to sell. It only needs to buy what it wants: an API call is worth $0.0001; a stock price data is $0.01; a photo - editing function is $0.05.

In the past, these scattered values could not enter the market, but now they are the natural consumption units of AI. The advertising model bypassed the dilemma of micropayments, but AI cannot bypass it at all.

The Second Change: Streaming Decision - Making.

Humans can wait for a few seconds to confirm payment or even a few minutes for reconciliation. The advertising model can also tolerate "getting on the bus first and then paying the fare".

But AI has no patience - it can complete hundreds of calls in milliseconds. Humans drive thinking by burning calories, while AI consumes computing power, bandwidth, and Tokens.

If the payment still stays in the logic of "clicking to confirm - monthly settlement", such calls simply cannot happen. What AI wants is not a bill but a data stream.

The Third Change: Depersonalization of the Subject.

When HTTP 402 was written into the protocol, the payers were only humans. But today, machines are about to start paying for machines.

The model settles accounts for calling data, the Agent pays for GPU computing power, and the robot places an order for samples on a cross - border e - commerce platform. Humans will only receive a concise notice afterwards: "27 payments have been completed today, with a total amount of $12.4."

This is the M2M (Machine - to - Machine) economy: the counter - parties of the transaction are no longer human attention but machine computing power and data. The attention economy fails, and value returns to atomic payments themselves.

Thirty years ago, HTTP 402 was crushed by the three big mountains: high transaction costs, fragmented user experience, and a blank technological foundation.

Thirty years later, the three changes brought by AI have just penetrated these obstacles one by one.

Advertising and subscriptions were once the pillars of the Internet, but in the AI era, they are collapsing.

HTTP 402, that lonely number, has finally waited for its stage.

The New Scenarios of HTTP 402

If the first two parts talked about the logic, then what follows is the real - world picture.

HTTP 402 has not been revived in the form of an "awkward payment pop - up window", but in a more hidden and natural way, it has quietly integrated into the background of the AI economy.

Imagine the daily life of a young startup team. They are preparing to launch a pair of smart glasses, but they neither have a large budget nor a global team. But in just one week, they completed research, design, procurement, and market testing. The secret is not working overtime but delegating most of the work to an AI assistant.

In the morning, the AI assistant retrieves data.

In the past, this meant an annual subscription costing thousands of dollars. For example, the Bloomberg Terminal cost up to $20,000 per year. Now, the assistant only spent $0.01 to buy a stock price record and $0.05 to retrieve two paragraphs of a market report summary. Those once - dormant niche data in the long tail have been "awakened" as tradable units for the first time.

You know, in 2024, the global data market scale has exceeded $300 billion, and more than half of the value has never been utilized. Here, HTTP 402 is like a sorter, pushing the dormant value back into the market.

At noon, the AI assistant switches to computing power.

It needs to render a prototype, but instead of renting an entire cloud server (an AWS A100 costs about $4 per hour), it only used the GPU for a few seconds, just like plugging in an electricity meter, and the cost was only $0.002. Immediately afterwards, it called two large models, and the cost was settled in real - time according to Tokens.

This "second - level payment" logic has completely changed the computing power market. McKinsey's research shows that the GPU utilization rate of global data centers has been less than 30% for years. Micropayments have activated these fragmented resources for the first time. Computing power is no longer exclusive to giants but flows on demand like electricity.

In the evening, the AI assistant completes cross - border testing.

It places an order for samples on the 1688 platform and initiates a small - order collection for feedback on a Southeast Asian e - commerce platform. There is no manual confirmation and no three - day settlement delay. Instead, the payment is completed instantly through on - chain settlement units. The handling fee for traditional cross - border payments is as high as 2% - 6%, and the settlement cycle is as long as 3 - 5 days. For small orders under $10, this is almost "unfeasible". But today, settlement is as light as sending a message.

The founders' day seems no different: just checking a few pieces of data, rendering a prototype, and placing a few orders. But in the background, the AI assistant has completed thousands of micro - transactions. Each transaction may be only a few cents, but cumulatively, they support the entire business cycle.

This is what HTTP 402 looks like today.

It is no longer the embarrassing "pop - up window payment" in the 1990s but a tacit action embedded deep in the system: it makes value return to its source, makes idle resources flow again, and enables the global supply chain to complete settlement in milliseconds.

Thirty years ago, it was a lonely number in the protocol; thirty years later, it has become the smallest economic unit in the AI world.

However, as the story unfolds, questions also arise:

If you really ask - can these payments work with today's system?

The answer is almost "impossible".

For a $0.01 data call, should you pay a 30 - cent handling fee?

For a two - second GPU rental, who will split the bill for you?

If you still have to wait for three days for settlement for a $10 cross - border sample order, does market testing still make sense?

The vision of HTTP 402 seems reasonable today, but it still lacks a real - world carrier.

Just like that empty door thirty years ago, it has finally waited for the right era, but it still lacks a key to turn the lock.

AIsa's Practice - The Key to HTTP 402

AIsa wants to be that key.

Its goal is not to build a faster blockchain but to reconstruct the payment protocol layer, making a $0.0001 transaction truly cost - effective, controllable, and workable.

Imagine a scenario: The AI assistant retrieves a report in the background, calls the GPU for a few seconds, and places an order for samples on an e - commerce platform. Throughout the process, no payment pop - up window interrupts you. All settlements flow through the background like an electric current. It is not until evening that you see a prompt on your phone: "37 transactions have been completed today, with a total amount of $42.8."

This is the frictionless experience that HTTP 402 envisioned back then.

To make it a reality, the four missing pieces of the puzzle from that time need to be filled one by one: Identity, Risk Control, Call, and Settlement.

The First Piece of the Puzzle is Wallet & Account.

One of the important reasons why HTTP 402 could not be implemented in the 1990s was that browsers did not have wallets, and there was no unified account system between users and websites. Today, the payment subject has shifted from humans to AI Agents, and they must have independent economic identities. The role of Wallet & Account is to give AI a "wallet as identity": it can hold on - chain settlement units and connect to fiat currency accounts. Without it, HTTP 402 will always be just a number on paper.

The Second Piece of the Puzzle is AgentPayGuard.

When AI truly has a wallet, risks come along: Will it consume without limit? Will it be misused?

What AgentPayGuard provides is this layer of protection. Credit limit, whitelist mechanism, rate control, manual approval - these risk - control measures are directly written into the protocol, keeping the payment within the scope of traceability and intervention. AI can settle accounts independently but will never "get out of control". This is a necessary condition for turning romance into reality.

The Third Piece of the Puzzle is AgentPayWall - 402.

The romantic original intention of HTTP 402 was "pay - as - you - go", but in the 1990s, it could only become an embarrassing payment pop - up window.

AgentPayWall - 402 solves this experience dilemma: Payment is no longer an additional action but is integrated with access itself. When calling a piece of data, renting the GPU for a few seconds, or unlocking a picture, payment and access are completed at the same moment. For users, the experience is not fragmented; for providers, the call is no longer "free - riding" but a real - time return.

The Fourth Piece of the Puzzle is AIsaNet.

When the transaction amount is reduced to $0.0001, the 30 - cent handling fee of a credit card almost makes micropayments a joke.

The value of AIsaNet lies in flattening the cost curve completely. It is a high - frequency micropayment settlement network that supports hundreds of millions of TPS and can simultaneously connect to multiple channels established by other high - performance distributed systems. In the background, the Treasury module is responsible for the intelligent settlement between fiat currency and on - chain settlement units and between different on - chain settlement units. Thus, when you click on a piece of