Opportunities in the x402 track Alpha lie hidden in the undercurrents of "micro-innovation."

I was stunned, and when I took a closer look, this is a 2,000 U question. Let me answer it with some trepidation:

1. x402 is essentially a protocol standard just like HTTP. We cannot buy a currency for HTTP, but companies built on HTTP such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook have created a prosperous internet era.

Standards themselves are not valuable, but the ecological infrastructure and application layer built around standards will capture value beyond our imagination. This point undoubtedly applies to the future potential value of the x402 track.

2. In the web2 era under HTTP, we have all witnessed that the beneficiaries are the giants who control the traffic entry and data. In contrast, x402 is just a start. Clearly, PING has already achieved a wave of success with the pioneering narrative of the MEME effect, but the short-term effect of the MEME won't last too long.

In the x402 track, both upstream and downstream infrastructure involves participants at various levels, including Facilitators, Providers, launchpads, and Applications, all of whom have the opportunity to share in the profits.

For example, if the Facilitator can break free from the constraints of being a pure packaging gas payment tool and become a new type of payment gateway and aggregator with Pay to Earn potential, then the larger the aggregated transaction volume, the greater the potential for the Facilitator to profit from taking a cut.

For example, if Providers like questflow and daydreams can build a complete Agent Pay infrastructure while also activating the potential of the Agentic economy from the source, they will naturally become a new attention distribution and traffic entry point for x402, and their commercialization value should not be underestimated.

Of course, if the new Launchpad around x402 can liberate the market from the unfair launching platform of Bounding Curve and the nihilistic MEME culture, there will also be a wave of pragmatic asset issuance narratives, which presents plenty of opportunities for the Launchpad itself.

As for the Base chain and Circle stablecoin issuer, which are the source ecosystem of x402 Crypto, x402 is a key channel that connects the web3 business payment scenarios with the web3 on-chain financial ecosystem created by Google and Coinbase, and it cannot be underestimated.

3. Where are the Alpha opportunities for retail investors? To speak responsibly, they certainly do not lie in pure MEME speculation. MEME speculation can quickly kickstart a narrative, but it can also extinguish a good narrative just as fast, as most MEMEs are zero-sum games. Given the current environment of liquidity depletion, the pure PVP risks far outweigh the opportunities.

In the long term, retail investors can focus on key nodes of innovation in the upstream and downstream of the x402 track, such as the gameplay innovation based on the x402 of the Base chain, the gameplay exploration of Facilitator in payment aggregators, or the emergence of entirely new launchpads and Mint methods. Of course, initiatives like Kite AI, which is backed by Paypal and aims to build high-performance, high-concurrency chain infrastructure and ecosystem for Agent Pay, also hold tremendous potential for innovation.

In a nutshell, retail investors in pure PVP can disperse; the real Alpha lies in the continuous focus on the x402 track and a deep understanding of a series of subsequent micro-innovations.

Alpha definitely comes from areas that the public has not yet discovered the potential of, where a few people have already positioned themselves in advance, and the x402 track has this potential.