Written by: Tia, Techub News

"Matthew Prince pointed out: For decades, the business model of the internet has been built on advertising platforms and bank transfers. The next era of the internet will be driven by pay-per-use, micro-payments, and micro-transactions."

For the past two decades, Cloudflare has been the "invisible supporter" of the global internet. Every day, it handles over 20% of global HTTP traffic, providing acceleration, caching, and security for countless websites. As a giant in internet infrastructure, it controls the lifeblood of information flow. Now, with the rise of AI agents, traditional internet business models are facing profound challenges, and Cloudflare is transforming its advantages into new business opportunities, attempting to rebuild the value foundation of the future AI economy through the x402 protocol and NET Dollar stablecoin.

Cloudflare's Traditional Business Model

In the past, the business model of internet giants was straightforward: the more traffic a website had and the longer users stayed, the more they could sell ads and subscriptions; user clicks and browsing behavior were the sources of revenue.

However, the AI era has changed all of this. AI agents can automatically access web pages, call APIs, and even scrape data in bulk. They do not need to "stay" or "click"; data acquisition is almost instantaneous and imperceptible; the money that was previously earned through "traffic and time spent" is no longer reliable.

Cloudflare's traditional business is "selling network acceleration, traffic security, and enterprise access management," allowing websites and APIs to be accessed quickly, securely, and reliably.

This may seem a bit abstract.

For example, take an online news website. It has thousands of visitors every day, spread across the globe. Some users may experience slow access due to being far from the server, and some websites may be subject to hacker attacks or be flooded with traffic from automated programs.

Cloudflare's role is to help websites accelerate, placing content on servers around the world so that people can open web pages faster, while also using firewalls to block malicious access and protect website security.

Websites need to pay monthly or based on traffic volume to use these services, and Cloudflare makes money by providing such acceleration and security services.

This is its traditional business model: paying monthly or selling network speed and security based on traffic volume.

The Ineffectiveness of Traditional Traffic-Based Charging in the AI Access Flood

AI agents can automatically scrape news, call APIs, and generate massive traffic, and they do so in an automated and continuous manner. The traditional traffic-based charging model struggles to adapt to this situation.

Traditional traffic-based charging is based on the "human visitor" model. When human users access web pages, each click and browse is fragmented and predictable. For example, on a news website, most users will browse a few articles within a few minutes each day, resulting in relatively stable traffic. Websites and Cloudflare can charge based on the number of visits, time spent, or bandwidth consumption.

But AI agents are different.

AI agents can access thousands of pages in seconds or call numerous APIs, and their access patterns are almost machine-level continuous "floods." The traditional traffic-based charging model cannot accurately respond to such instantaneous peaks.

Moreover, human visitors will linger, refresh, and browse specific pages, resulting in a natural distribution of traffic; AI agents may access content in bulk according to program logic, with no time spent and no constraints of natural rhythm. Under the traditional charging model, a website may be "flooded with traffic," but this traffic does not bring traditional value (such as ad clicks or subscriptions).

At the same time, AI agents may frequently access content without paying for it. If traditional charging methods are still used, websites cannot effectively control the correspondence between payment and access, nor can they automatically verify the identity of the agents, leading to potential economic losses.

When AI agents break this correspondence: massive access may not generate ads, subscriptions, or payments, and Cloudflare's traditional charging methods become imprecise.

AI agents can automatically, massively, and continuously access websites, almost without relying on human clicks or time spent. Without corresponding identity verification and payment mechanisms, websites and Cloudflare are likely to provide a large amount of access traffic but fail to generate corresponding revenue.

Perhaps x402 is the Cure

On September 23, Cloudflare is collaborating with Coinbase to establish the x402 Foundation. The mission of this foundation is to promote the adoption of the x402 protocol, specifically for payments between AI agents or between on-chain applications.

Let’s first explain what x402 is.

x402 can be understood as "the protocol standard for automatic charging on the internet."

Do you remember encountering HTTP 404 (page not found) when visiting websites?

"402" is another status code that has existed for a long time but has not been widely adopted:

HTTP 402: Payment Required.

Now, with the increasing number of AI agents, robots, and automated programs, they need a way to automatically pay and unlock content when accessing web pages, APIs, and data.

Thus, people have started to re-enable this old "402" and turn it into a new standard—x402.

It allows websites to say when accessed, "This information costs $0.001; once you pay, I will show it to you."

Cloudflare's Role in the x402 Protocol

In the x402 protocol, Cloudflare can be seen as "the network entry manager and payment escort." It controls large-scale global traffic and serves as the intermediary between websites and AI agents.

Every time an AI agent wants to access content, it must go through Cloudflare's network nodes while completing identity verification and payment processing.

Through the x402 protocol, Cloudflare can confirm whether the identity of the AI agent is trustworthy, prevent unauthorized access, and ensure that each access corresponds to actual economic value.

Cloudflare can also embed a charging model in this process to achieve profitability. Every time an AI agent needs to pay to access content, Cloudflare can charge a certain percentage as a service fee or handling fee.

Moreover, the services it provides include not only identity verification but also content distribution acceleration and payment processing, making every piece of traffic from AI access economically beneficial.

In this way, Cloudflare not only protects its network service revenue but also transforms the large-scale access of AI agents into sustainable economic traffic, ensuring that access and economic value are re-bound.

Issuing NET Dollar Stablecoin

However, Cloudflare's ambitions go beyond this; it has further issued the NET Dollar stablecoin to facilitate the "payment" aspect within the vast digital network.

For large enterprises, payment has long been the most challenging aspect to control in the business closed loop. The traditional system relies on banks and payment institutions, which have complex processes, high costs, and low transparency. By issuing its own stablecoin, a company can bypass these intermediaries and complete settlements directly on-chain, improving efficiency, reducing costs, and allowing enterprises to regain control over transaction speed and rules, establishing a truly controllable value closed loop.

Cloudflare processes over one-fifth of global internet access requests daily, meaning it is involved in almost all "data flow" processes on the internet. In the past, this traffic merely made websites load faster and information transfer smoother; but in the AI era, every access and every API request could correspond to a real transaction.

If these accesses can be completed through Cloudflare's own x402 protocol and NET Dollar stablecoin for payment, then Cloudflare can not only accelerate data flow but also extract value flow from it. It will become "the channel through which every AI payment passes" in the machine economy era. In other words, it can turn traffic that was originally "visible but unprofitable" into a continuous stream of revenue.

The Trust and Settlement Foundation Layer of the AI Agent Ecosystem

Cloudflare's layout in the payment field is also accelerating.

Cloudflare has partnered with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to jointly establish certification standards for AI autonomous agents (AI Agents) in business, promoting the establishment of a "Trusted AI Agent Protocol." At the same time, Cloudflare has also collaborated with Visa to develop a merchant verification system based on its Web Bot Auth standard, used to identify and authorize AI shopping agents; Mastercard and American Express have also adopted similar mechanisms in their respective AI business frameworks.

As AI agents gain more financial autonomy, they will need a programmable currency to complete instant, secure, and verifiable online payments. Cloudflare is attempting to become the trust and settlement foundation layer of this new machine economy ecosystem.

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