TRM Study Finds AI Agents Barely Use x402 Payments

The gap between narrative and on-chain reality is the story here: x402's settlement volume suggests a functioning payment rail, but TRM's read is that humans and conventional flows, not autonomous agents, are doing the transacting. That distinction matters for anyone building or funding agent-commerce infrastructure, because it implies the demand side is still aspirational rather than demonstrated. What's worth watching is whether agent-originated activity becomes separable from general protocol usage in future data — until it does, claims about an agent economy rest on inference rather than evidence.