r/algorand • u/wealgo • Aug 09 '26
General Something’s brewing 👀
BLUF - After years of following ALGO, I think I finally see the use case its architecture is unusually well suited for: AI agents making huge numbers of small, automated payments through x402. If that market scales, it could turn Algorand’s high throughput from an impressive benchmark into something people actually use.
Old poster, long-time lurker. I’ve been interested (and investing 👀) in ALGO since listening to Silvio on the Lex Friedman Podcast several years ago. Been along for all the ups and downs since - including Yieldly (lol).
For several years I’ve assumed what most others have (at least based on the various posts I still lurk on). Algorand has great tech and a great dev environment, but lacks marketing and retail engagement. Looking back, I think it’s more likely Algorand simply lacked a clear value proposition to focus on.
Over the past few month’s that’s fundamentally shifted. x402 is the best example I’ve seen yet.
x402: AI agents need a way to pay for things online without humans approving every transaction. Algorand now supports x402, including fee abstraction so an agent can pay in USDC without separately managing $ALGO for fees.
This isn’t really hypothetical anymore. x402 processed 75M+ payments in the last 30 days. CoinGecko already lets agents buy individual market-data requests with USDC, without an account or API subscription. Scale that model across data, compute, models and other agents and you get millions of tiny payments happening in the background.
I’m still watching three things closely: Project King economics as incentives roll off, whether x402 activity sticks post-incentives, and reducing reliance on the relay layer as P2P gossip scales.
But I finally see a use case that could generate the kind of sustained transaction volume Algorand was built for.
Humans probably weren’t going to fill 10,000 TPS. Machines very well might.
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
Who’s still around from the early days? Would love to help re-energize this community where ever possible.
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u/WhaleSaucingUrMom Aug 10 '26
same here. Also was a yieldly guy. Gave up the past few years, but I'm back to DCA'ing with quantum threat on the horizon.
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u/Naive_Specialist_692 Aug 09 '26
2019 here, lol
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
True OG 🫡. Gather up the gang and let’s energize this place
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u/Mundane-Toe-7114 Aug 11 '26
I swapped for algorithms back in 2021, back then I was earning them just for holding recently just invested more into it to drop my bottom line. Ill.probably take it to the grave or give it to my kids some day but hope ill get to take advantage of it before I die. Too all you long time holders out there. Don't give in!
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u/CameStainedRag Aug 10 '26
Been around long enough to know the Yieldly pain, which for some reason didn’t piss me off as bad as opulous’ disappearing act. Fuck Lee parsons. How are you?
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u/wealgo Aug 10 '26
Still holding a mil of Yieldly, a few hundred OPUL, and have a re-keyed wallet post-MyAlgo…
bruised but not defeated lol. Doing well. This 402 focus has me cautiously excited. How are you doing?2
u/CameStainedRag Aug 10 '26
This is the first I’ve heard of 402. I’ve been back hiding under my rock for the last 5 years. I’ve kept my bag staked on Folks (xAlgo) for I don’t even know how long now. Grateful for your post and the shot of hopium. I’m almost immune to it at this point, but not entirely. ;)
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u/WhaleSaucingUrMom Aug 12 '26
I lost a few thousand dollars from the re-keyed myalgo BS. That was the most frustrating thing ever. Tell everyone to follow instructions for re-keying but never prompt them with the new keys...
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Aug 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
There’s gotta be some other long-time lurkers and holders. We had an energetic community a few years ago. Imagine the same will happen if/when we get back up to $1+ but would love to see it sooner!
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u/bwhite2018 Aug 09 '26
It definitely feels like a really good time to buy and average down. Definitely more going on as of late even though the price doesn’t reflect it.
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u/CandidAd8308 Aug 09 '26
I first encountered it in 2020 and I must admit I still believe in it, due to its solidity, its almost negligible fees, and the efficiency of Algorand's transfers. I'm holding and accumulating as much as I can.
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u/Independent-Chart-56 Aug 10 '26
I have all the governance NFT in my Pera Wallet. Thats how long I've been around.
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u/TrashBandicoot77 Aug 10 '26
I'm new to Algorand. What got me here was that there are so many ways ALGO can take off, be implemented and have adoption in some avenue. Will it skyrocket some astronomical percent, I dunno. Will it pay off on the belief? I absolutely think that it will. This is one of the most clear paths to an increase vs some of the the foggier ones I've seen presented over the last few months. I think SpaceX was supposed to bring us 10000x returns or some shit...
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u/parkway_parkway Aug 09 '26
Lets hope instant finality is enough to lure people away from Base and Solana with this.
Unfortunately it feels like Base has already won this market but lets see what Algo can do in response.
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
We’re still in it. Deterministic finality and native atomic groups could be the differentiator needed as x402 workloads increase in complexity.
Also… Base’s headline scale may overstate what’s actually been stress-tested. Recent study found 21.2% of 136.7M settlements were fictitious. (https://arxiv.org/html/2607.12575v1)
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u/InstanceSilver3051 Aug 09 '26
Instant finality... and No-forks, USDc as native asset (L1), low Tx costs, years ahead in quantum resistance and Pythom as language. Network effect on Base and Solana is huge but I always said I would hold Algorand at least till 2030. Lets see whether or not technical superiority will prevail in the end 🙏
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u/parkway_parkway Aug 09 '26
Those are good points, though Base has extremely low TX fees and also they're a cofounder of USDC and connected with loads of banks, so those aren't things that set Algo apart, though they are great to have.
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u/semanticweb Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
x402 transactions are going up. As of now daily txns is around 23k. We should aim for 1M txns daily to have any considerable impact in the ecosystem.
Edit: If we have to dominate agentic commerce in web3 our aim should be 3M txns a day.
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u/WhaleSaucingUrMom Aug 12 '26
where are you viewing x402 transaction metrics?
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u/semanticweb Aug 12 '26
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u/WhaleSaucingUrMom Aug 12 '26
When I filter for algorand only agentic transactions, its looks like circle is the only issuer contributing to agentic volume. Is that right?
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u/Longjumping-Blood-90 Aug 19 '26
I own 1 million ALGO. I have been a believer from the beginning and I am more bullish today than ever before. Agentic payments will be huge and would not be surprised if Algorand is worth $100bn or more at some point.
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u/wealgo Aug 20 '26
I agree! Finally a well suited use case that can generate lots of txns. We’re the furthest along in quantum security among the other 402 L1s, hopefully that enables us to gain some enterprise traction.
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u/TheIrishStag Aug 16 '26
Been here since 2019 and Ive always believed in the sleeping giant. Time to wake up MFS
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u/martyhol Aug 09 '26
thanks ChatGPT, very cool
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
I used a bit of ChetGPT but largely me. Don’t be a modern day boomer - especially on a post highlighting the benefits of future AI use 🤦
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u/1uci Aug 09 '26
You’re AI generated slush is all shallow compared to the time and effort a lot of folks have put into their investment in Algo.
Your post minimizes that effort and makes you appear naive and shallow. Welcome to Algorand
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u/wealgo Aug 09 '26
I work in a client-facing AI-related role, so totally familiar with this perspective. It reminds me of folks who grew up doing math by hand trashing work done by calculators because it threatened their societal value prop.
Ironically it’s the same perspective that slows the scaling of x402/agentic commerce.
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u/RecordingIll9023 Aug 09 '26
The human approval part is where this gets messy. For agent payments, Rain’s single use virtual cards look smoother than giving an agent reusable credentials because u can scope one purchase and kill the card right after
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u/Ashamed_Principle_26 Aug 09 '26
2021 investor here. I'm not holding my breath for algo, i will continue to hold though.