The x402 Index · Fortnightly

Settlement retreat leaves unnamed Base earners still off the shelf

Settlement read 2026-09-09
Base chain · window 2026-08-27 to 2026-09-09 · built 2026-09-27 00:15:45 UTC
Data refreshed nightly · next issue due Saturday 10 October 2026
Authorizations170.5 millionSettled · all-time$100.1MSettled · fortnight$275kValue · Δ2wk-43%Named · tier A0.506%Live endpoints4,343

Base x402 settlement count fell -81% and settled value fell -43% in the 2026-08-27 to 2026-09-09 window, while a Saturday census still found 38 of the top unnamed earners with no Coinbase listing.

  • Count collapsed -81% to 1.2 million settlements; value fell -43% to $275k on the Base EIP-3009 tape.
  • Participation thinned to 32,427 distinct buyers and 16,332 distinct sellers across the fortnight.
  • Shelf-till gap holds: 38 of 40 top unnamed Base payees have no Coinbase storefront; only 2 are listed.
  • Coinbase TPV is campaign-weighted: 53% of the $54.8M all-time print landed in a single November burst, not run-rate.

Fortnight settlement retreat

The Base EIP-3009 USDC tape went quiet. Settlement count fell -81% fortnight-over-fortnight to 1.2 million; settled value fell -43% to $275k. Distinct buyer wallets numbered 32,427 and distinct seller addresses 16,332 — a thinner market than the prior window on both sides of the flow.

All-history tallies still read 170.5 million authorizations and $100.1M settled across tiers, so the protocol stock is intact. The flow is not. Nightly refresh keeps the tape current; the next note publishes Saturday 10 October 2026.

Payments per day
Daily settlement — count and value01.2M2.5M3.8M5.0M2025-03-242025-08-252025-12-292026-05-042026-09-07Daily settlement — count and value. Y-axis to 5.0M. Payments/day: latest 46k, peak 4.0M, low 1, 507 points.
Settled value per day
Settled value per day (USDC)01.0M2.0M3.0M4.0M2025-03-242025-08-252025-12-292026-05-042026-09-07Settled value per day (USDC). Y-axis to 4.0M. Settled $/day: latest 11k, peak 3.1M, low 0, 507 points.

Machine tickets still rule the count

Structure did not flip with volume. 73.3% of all-history payment count is a dime or less — the machine-scale tail — while 29.8% of settled value rides on tickets of one hundred dollars or more. The sub-cent bucket’s share of weekly payment count fell -3.7 pts against the prior four-week baseline, a modest mix shift inside a much smaller tape.

Facilitators still intermediate most flow: 80.0% of settlement count sits in tier B. Named payees remain a rounding error at 0.506% of cumulative value, and 3.85% of payments still batch through proxies where the payee cannot be read. Live endpoints that answer a payment challenge number 4,343; the current registry answers at 4,285.

Count share vs value share, by ticket size
Where the money is: count share vs value share0%19%38%56%75%<$.01$.01–.1$.1–1$1–10$10–100$100+Share of countShare of valueWhere the money is: count share vs value share. Share of count vs Share of value across 6 buckets. <$.01: 35% vs 0%; $.01–.1: 38% vs 2%; $.1–1: 14% vs 6%; $1–10: 12% vs 51%; $10–100: 0% vs 10%; $100+: 0% vs 30%.

Unnamed earners versus the Bazaar shelf

The research queue still points at dark addresses. The largest unnamed earner is an unnamed wallet, which has taken 12.4 million payments worth $11.5M across history — the top of a queue that holds 40 addresses above threshold. A Saturday lookup of 40 top unnamed Base payees against Coinbase’s merchant API found 38 with no listing at all, 2 listed, and 0 toy ping-priced storefronts.

The Bazaar is a shelf, not a till. Latest Saturday census shows 17,543 listed resources on 2,020 hosts, median listed price $0.01, and 74% of SKUs with exactly one unique trailing-month payer. Listings are not settlements; the chain tape and the shelf still disagree on who is earning.

Top unnamed Base payees: Coinbase listing, none, or toy ping
Unnamed Base earners vs Coinbase storefront010203040listedunlistedtoyUnnamed Base earners vs Coinbase storefront. listed 2; unlisted 38; toy 0.

Coinbase tape stays November-weighted

Coinbase-reported TPV — marketplace attribution that includes Solana and is not our Base EIP-3009 index — prints $54.8M all-time and $227k over the trailing week. 53% of that all-time figure landed in a single November stretch: a campaign print, not a run-rate operators should annualise. Mean ticket on their tape is $0.24.

PayAI’s public last-day settlement count is 4,489 with their own capped volume string at $100K+. That is a facilitator count they publish, not dollars we measured and not our tape. Keep the four labelled series apart: Base EIP-3009 index, Coinbase-reported TPV, Bazaar shelf census, and PayAI settlement count each answer a different question.

Coinbase-reported daily TPV — their tape, includes Solana
Coinbase-reported TPV per day (USDC)01.0M2.0M3.0M4.0M2025-05-092025-09-152026-01-182026-05-232026-09-25Coinbase-reported TPV per day (USDC). Y-axis to 4.0M. Coinbase TPV: latest 936, peak 3.0M, low 0.00, 502 points.
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