Edge&Node and Coinbase Pilot Stablecoin Delegated Payments for The Graph to Enable Sub-Cent Microtransactions

Edge&Node, the core development team for The Graph, is working with Coinbase to evaluate a Delegated Payments mechanism that builds on the existing x402 standard. The current x402 implementation supports stablecoin microtransactions over native HTTP, but settling each small transfer on-chain would materially constrain the delegate economy due to throughput and settlement costs.

The team has proposed a delayed settlement architecture in which a delegate authorizes payment with a signed credential, servers aggregate those credentials off-chain, and final settlement is performed on-chain via a single transaction. This design emphasizes batch settlement to reduce on-chain load and lower per-unit transaction overhead.

Edge&Node suggests the approach could enable sub‑one‑cent microtransactions and support scalable, high‑speed machine-to-machine commerce across large numbers of delegates, while relying on conventional on‑chain finality for ultimate settlement integrity.