Use cases

Under standard x402, the price of every API call settles as a plain ERC-20 transfer, so the amount is a permanent public record. The confidential scheme keeps the amount off the ledger: the resource server quotes it to the client over TLS, and what lands onchain is a commitment. That single change is what makes the flows below workable on a public chain.

Dynamic pricing

Charge per client rather than per endpoint — by identity, reputation, volume tier, negotiated contract or discount code.

On standard x402, each of those prices is a public transfer, so anyone can reconstruct the full rate card by watching the chain and see exactly which customers got which terms. Under the confidential scheme the quoted amount reaches the client over TLS and never reaches the blockchain, so there is no onchain evidence of what any individual customer paid.

Auctions and private bidding

Where access to a resource is priced by competitive offer rather than a list price, the amount each participant commits to is never written onchain. A clearing price or an individual offer cannot be recovered from the ledger afterwards.

Participant addresses stay visible, so this hides what was bid, not who bid.

Competitor protection

Pricing strategy is commercially sensitive in both directions.

For a provider, public settlement exposes promotional campaigns, enterprise rates and volume discounts as they happen — a competitor can price against your book in real time.

For an agent, spending patterns across providers reveal its economic strategy: how much budget it allocates to each data source shows which ones it depends on. Under the confidential scheme an observer can still count an agent's payments, but cannot sum them or compare them across providers.

Metering and automated settlement

Per-call metering, usage-based billing and automated disbursement to downstream providers all run as ordinary x402 payments. The amounts settle confidentially, so a machine-to-machine flow can be paid out continuously without publishing the unit economics of the service behind it.

What stays visible

The confidential scheme hides payment amounts and account balances. It does not hide:

• sender and receiver addresses
• payment frequency and timing
• the sender–receiver relationship

A full breakdown is in Protocol reference → Privacy & trust model.

Where to start

Goal	Start here
Run a payment end-to-end	Quickstart
Add the scheme to your own client and server	Integration guide