OpenMind Explores Why the x402 Payment Protocol is Gaining Attention

Author: Haotian; Source: X, @tmel0211

The x402 protocol, as a major narrative for AI Agent payments, has become a hot commodity sought after by many parties.

While everyone is still exploring how AI Agents can automatically swipe cards to purchase API services, OpenMind is already planning to enable embodied robots equipped with NVIDIA Jetson Thor chips to autonomously navigate the real world and complete real-time payments via the x402 protocol.

Why is this worth paying attention to?

As a leading project in the robotics track, OpenMind has secured over $20M in investments from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Amber Group, and others, focusing on building decentralized intelligent infrastructure for robots.

It’s important to note: its BrainPack system is powered by NVIDIA Jetson Thor chips, providing next-generation autonomous capabilities for humanoid and quadruped robots, enabling navigation in real urban environments, scene recognition, and handling complex tasks.

With this in-depth collaboration with Circle, OpenMind has one goal: allow robots to execute hundreds or even thousands of instant, reliable, cross-chain payments per second while performing physical tasks.

Looking at their Github design proposal, they have indeed made some improvements and adjustments for the x402 protocol: for example, enhancing payment security mechanisms to prevent payment fraud during task execution and ensuring fund confirmation within 2 seconds; at the same time, introducing a batch processing solution using Gateway off-chain technology, enabling robots to carry out millions of micropayments without waiting for blockchain confirmation each time, with a final unified settlement.

Of course, while x402 adoption among virtual AI Agents is not yet widespread, robots in the real world are already equipped with such convenient payment capabilities. Imagine this:

A delivery robot performing tasks on the street, purchasing map navigation APIs, weather data, and traffic services in real time; an inspection robot autonomously paying for cloud computing power to process visual recognition; multiple robots automatically settling collaborative service fees among themselves via the x402 protocol…

Compared to the technical challenges of virtual AI Agent payments, this undoubtedly raises the bar: payments between virtual agents can tolerate some delay, but robots performing physical tasks must ensure “instant, reliable, high-frequency” payments.

The key point:

This exploration of the x402 payment protocol by OpenMind was publicly acknowledged by Circle’s CEO. In a sense, it also received some support from NVIDIA. In addition, their partner Unitree Robotics is preparing for a public listing by the end of the year. At that time, the value that the x402 payment protocol can provide in the robotics field will become much more tangible.