Ankr is officially entering the x402 ecosystem, launching its first pay-per-request blockchain infrastructure services for autonomous AI agents. Debuting on Monad mainnet, the new capabilities allow agents to independently access Ankr's RPC infrastructure and agent tools by paying in USDC, with no account, signup, or API key required.

The launch marks Ankr's first integration of the x402 payment protocol, opening a new way for AI agents to discover, purchase, and use blockchain infrastructure autonomously. Ankr's x402-enabled Monad RPC service is now live on Monad's API Hub, where agents can pay for direct access to blockchain data including transactions, event logs, balances, and contract state.

Monad built the API Hub as a marketplace of services that agents can discover, pay for, and use on their own. With Ankr joining as an infrastructure provider, agents can now purchase the blockchain reads they need directly within the Monad ecosystem, bringing autonomous payments and onchain intelligence together.

Why x402 Matters for Agents

Most APIs are built for people. A developer signs up, adds a payment method, generates a key, and pastes it into their code. An autonomous agent can't do that on its own, so every service it uses has to be set up by a human in advance.

x402 removes that step. It uses HTTP's 402 Payment Required status code, reserved in the spec for decades, to attach a payment to the request itself. An agent that finds a new service can pay for it and use it in the same exchange, with no prior relationship. That is what makes a catalog like Monad's API Hub work: an agent can browse it, pick a service, and start using it immediately.

How It Works

x402 turns a standard HTTP request into a paid one. The flow takes a single round trip:

1. The agent calls an Ankr endpoint.
2. Ankr responds with HTTP 402 and the payment terms.
3. The agent signs a USDC payment on Monad and resends the request.
4. Monad's facilitator verifies and settles the payment.
5. Ankr returns the data.

Agents can find every available tool on their own through Ankr's discovery manifest, which follows the x402 v2 spec on Monad mainnet (eip155:143).

What Agents Can Access With x402

x402 opens two ways into Ankr on Monad. Agents that use MCP can call Ankr's agent tools at mcp.ankr.com/rpc. Agents that prefer standard calls can use plain JSON-RPC at x402.rpc.ankr.com/monad_mainnet. Both are paid the same way, per request, in USDC.

The agent tools return data an agent can use directly, without writing its own decoding layer:

• Decoded transactions and receipts. What a transaction did, in readable form.
• Logs with named arguments. Contract events with their fields labeled, so an agent can follow transfers, swaps, and state changes.
• Native balances. Current holdings for any address.
• Contract metadata. What a contract is before an agent interacts with it.
• Token prices. Current price data alongside onchain state.
• Any read method. Call any view function on any Monad contract.

The tools are built on TORPC, Ankr's open, CC0-licensed RPC spec for agents.

What This Unlocks for Agentic Finance on Monad

An agent that manages funds needs to see the chain before it acts and confirm what happened after. Until now, an agent on the Hub could buy search results, contact data, and onchain analytics, but reading Monad's live state still meant signing up for an RPC provider separately. Ankr closes that gap inside the Hub.

The result is a complete loop on one network. An agent holds USDC on Monad, pays for the reads it needs on Monad, and acts on Monad. A few examples of what that enables:

• Pre-trade checks. Confirm balances, read pool state, and verify a contract before committing funds.
• Execution confirmation. Decode the receipt of a swap or deposit to verify it settled as intended.
• Position monitoring. Follow named-argument events from lending markets, vaults, and DEXs to react to liquidations, rate changes, or large flows.
• Contract due diligence. Pull metadata and call read methods on an unfamiliar protocol before an agent interacts with it.

For builders, this means an agent can be deployed on Monad with nothing more than a funded wallet. For the Hub, it adds the read layer that the rest of its onchain services build on.

Get Started

• Ankr on the API Hub: https://app.monad.xyz/agents/api-hub/ankr
• MCP tools: https://mcp.ankr.com/rpc
• JSON-RPC: https://x402.rpc.ankr.com/monad_mainnet
• Discovery manifest: https://x402.rpc.ankr.com/.well-known/x402
• TORPC spec: https://rpc.ankr.com/.well-known/torpc.json
• Monad x402 docs: https://docs.monad.xyz/guides/x402

Point your agent at the endpoint, fund its wallet with USDC on Monad, and start reading the chain.