---
title: "x402 isn’t good (yet)"
category: "talks"
date: "2026-07-01"
time: "12:05pm-12:25pm"
track: "Agentic Commerce"
room: "Track 2"
speakers: ["Jan Curn"]
sourceLabels: ["Official conference schedule", "Public YouTube metadata"]
scheduleTrack: "Agentic Commerce"
scheduleRoom: "Track 2"
scheduleLabels: ["Agentic Commerce", "Track 2", "sponsor", "confirmed"]
---
# x402 isn’t good (yet)

## Conference Context
- Date/time: 2026-07-01 · 12:05pm-12:25pm
- Track/room: Agentic Commerce · Track 2
- Speaker(s): Jan Curn
- Session type/status: sponsor · confirmed

- Track: Agentic Commerce
- Room: Track 2
- Session type: sponsor
- Status: confirmed

## Session Description
While everyone understands that agents will get more done with a budget, no one knows which protocol will win agentic payment standard wars: x402, MPP, Skyfire, or another? So far, x402 is the most mature protocol with the largest transaction volume, but even its new "upto" payment scheme doesn’t support true usage-based pricing, as it gives agents a chance to consume resources and then skip out on the bill. I’ll walk you through our experience (and pains) implementing agentic payments for a marketplace of 30K+ web Actors, and how we made it work even with the current specs.

## Media Evidence
[The rise of the agentic economy on the shoulders of MCP — Jan Curn, Apify](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blW-lSd5CYQ) (speaker-match related prior/adjacent AI Engineer video; captions: English auto-captions).

- Source video: `youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ`
- Slide deck: [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-dense-slides|Dense Slides: The rise of the agentic economy on the shoulders of MCP — Jan Curn, Apify]] — 7 visible slide image(s); 7 HTML recreation(s).
![[assets/dense-slides/blW-lSd5CYQ/slide-001.jpg]]
![[assets/dense-slides/blW-lSd5CYQ/slide-002.jpg]]
![[assets/dense-slides/blW-lSd5CYQ/slide-003.jpg]]
- Additional slide evidence: [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-slides|Slides: The rise of the agentic economy on the shoulders of MCP — Jan Curn, Apify]], [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-reconstructed-slides|Reconstructed Slides: The rise of the agentic economy on the shoulders of MCP — Jan Curn, Apify]]
- Slide-derived themes for `youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ`: google, maps, intelligence, emerge, runs, actors, compass, data.

## Evidence Graph
This evidence graph is generated from currently linked source material: official schedule text, related video pages, cached transcripts, visible slide text, dense/reconstructed slide pages, and AI slide-classification audits.

### Media Signals
- `youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ` — 9 slide-derived text signals
- Slide-derived themes for `youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ`: google, maps, intelligence, emerge, runs, actors, compass, data.
- Evidence links for `youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ`: [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ]], [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-slides]], [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-dense-slides]], [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-reconstructed-slides]]

### Agent Reading Notes
Use these signals to refine the synopsis, topic links, people/company context, and method notes. If a source is a related external video rather than an exact official recording, keep it framed as supporting evidence.

## Transcript Status
Related video transcript availability: English auto-captions. Treat this as supporting context, not a recording of this exact scheduled session unless later confirmed. Not fetched yet.

## People
- [[jan-curn]]

## Supporting Slides
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-slides]] — extracted from the related public AI Engineer video.

## Slide Evidence
- Slide-only cropped deck: [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-dense-slides]] (7 viable slide images).
- Related slide/OCR pages:
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-dense-slides]]
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-reconstructed-slides]]
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-slides]]
- Slide-derived terms: `scraper`, `actor`, `google`, `maps`, `email`, `extract`, `form`, `world`, `sfair`, `apify`, `details`, `posts`, `intelligence`, `emerge`, `tool`, `runs`, `instagram`, `contact`

## Synthesis
### Synthesized Breakdown
# x402 isn’t good (yet) ## Conference Context - Date/time: 2026-07-01 · 12:05pm-12:25pm - Track/room: Agentic Commerce · Track 2 - Speaker(s): Jan Curn - Session type/status: sponsor · confirmed - Track: Agentic Commerce - Room: Track 2 - Session type: sponsor - Status: confirmed ## Session Description While everyone understands that agents will get more done with a budget, no one knows which protocol will win agentic payment standard wars: x402, MPP, Skyfire, or another? So far, x402 is the most mature protocol with the largest transaction volume, but even its new "upto" payment scheme doesn’t support true usage-based pricing, as it gives agents a chance to consume resources and then skip out on the bill. I’ll walk you through our experience (and pains) implementing agentic payments for a marketplace of 30K+ web Actors, and how we made it work even with the current specs. ## Media Evidence [The rise of the agentic economy on the shoulders of MCP — Jan Curn, Apify](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blW-lSd5CYQ) (speaker-match related prior/adjacent AI Engineer video; captions: English auto-captions).

### Speaker And Company Context
- [[jan-curn|Jan Curn]] — Founder & CEO at [[apify|Apify]].

### Topics Covered
- [[mcp]]

### Derived Links And Source Material
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ]] — related YouTube source page.
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-slides]] — slide evidence.
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-reconstructed-slides]] — slide evidence.
- [[youtube-blW-lSd5CYQ-dense-slides]] — slide evidence.

### Novel Concepts / Clever Methods
- No highlighted novel concept has been detected yet.

### Evidence Boundary
This synthesis is based on the official schedule and linked source pages. It should be revisited when exact session recordings or transcript-backed secondary sources are available.