The introduction of HTTP/1.1 in 1997 marked significant advancements in web communications, notably with persistent connections and chunked transfer encoding. Among its innovations, the specification included HTTP status code 402, 'Payment Required,' which anticipated the eventual importance of online payments. Now, nearly three decades later, with the rise of online transactions, this status code remains unutilized until Coinbase's x402 protocol in May 2025, which enables native onchain payments. This reflects a critical shift toward machine-to-machine payment processes in a progressively automated digital economy.
Today's internet is finally seeing the HTTP 402 status code transform into a viable payment solution with the introduction of Coinbase's x402 protocol.
The founders of the web anticipated the significance of payments on the internet, which led to the reservation of the HTTP 402 status code.
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