Do x402 routes accept the example their own payment terms publish?
The short answer
Not always. Some routes on the low-price paid panel publish a placeholder where the protocol asks for an example value, and some of those turned the placeholder away when it was sent, a few of them after the payment had settled.
As published in the issue
Some routes rejected the example in their own payment instructions. 26 routes publish a placeholder where the protocol asks for an example value: the word example, a type name such as string, or the input's own name.
(4) The PANEL population: the 755 listed x402 routes priced at five cents or less on the published paid panel, at most two per host, called once a week in October in USDC on Base with a request built from the inputs each route published in its payment terms; every paid figure describes those calls and what came back, a comparison with calls made in September names their dates, and none is a rate for the wider market.
The sentence above is quoted from a published issue and is not re-written here. Its date, its population and the record behind it are below.
What we measured
A fixed panel of low-price listed x402 routes, called each week in October with a request built from the inputs each route published in its payment terms, with each published example classed by a written rule for what counts as a placeholder. The exact population rule is quoted beside the figure below, and the limit that bounds it beneath.
What the evidence shows
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 31
- Observations in that window
- 412,533
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #003 — October 2026
- Published
31 days
2026-10-01 · 2026-10-02 · 2026-10-03 · 2026-10-04 · 2026-10-05 · 2026-10-06 · 2026-10-07 · 2026-10-08 · 2026-10-09 · 2026-10-10 · 2026-10-11 · 2026-10-12 · 2026-10-13 · 2026-10-14 · 2026-10-15 · 2026-10-16 · 2026-10-17 · 2026-10-18 · 2026-10-19 · 2026-10-20 · 2026-10-21 · 2026-10-22 · 2026-10-23 · 2026-10-24 · 2026-10-25 · 2026-10-26 · 2026-10-27 · 2026-10-28 · 2026-10-29 · 2026-10-30 · 2026-10-31
All 31 days behind these figures (1–31 Oct 2026) are sealed, each with its published hash on the Integrity page; each date opens that day's manifest.
What this does not say
- The results describe this low-price panel, which may not be representative of the wider market.
Method and reproduction
The runs behind the figures, the record each one produced, and the terms this question uses.
What ran, when, and the record it produced.
| What ran | When | Record hash |
|---|---|---|
| The request behind every error on the panel: each call joined to the inputs its own payment terms declared and the example they published, with the written rule for what counts as a placeholder fixed and hashed before any reply was read, the cause of each error assigned by that rule, and 24 readings made by eye recorded as data. | 9d100af9e415ef17cea333da635dc37148acc5dbe4f74b7a4c12862c2573a087 |
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.