Micro-payments power autonomous AI software as onchain agentic transactions soar

Among wallets first funded in the second quarter of 2026, 89.3% received additional funding within 30 days, compared with 70.6% for wallets first funded in the Q3 2025. The analysis excluded wallets that made payments on one only one day.

The time between a wallet receiving funds and making its first x40 payment also fell sharply, from an average of 73 days in late 2025 to just 18 minutes in Q3 2026.

China, meanwhile, showed a different pattern of activity. Chinese-linked wallets accounted for roughly 90% of geographically identified payments for security and code-analysis services, much of it directed toward AgentLisa, an AI-powered smart contract auditing platform.

He cautioned against interpreting that gap as evidence that open-source AI was undermining Asia's payments market.

"That's one possible interpretation, but we wouldn't go so far as to say open-source AI is starving Asia's on-chain inference market," he said.

The figures measure identifiable transactions through x402, rather than the entire global market for AI payments.

"AI agents are becoming economic actors where every agent is effectively a new 'user' of the blockchain," Tejwani said in the report.

For now, the transactions remain small, but Chainalysis' findings suggest autonomous software is beginning to establish its own spending habits, with the United States leading the market for paid AI services.