How fresh are x402 health labels?
The short answer
Less fresh than their cadence claims. The strongest freshness claims in the field sat beside counters that did not support them, or beside no counter at all, when we read them.
As published in the issue
The strongest cadence claims in the field sit beside counters that do not support them — or beside no counter at all (each provider's own published words beside its own published counter, all read 2026-09-01):
An old observation is not necessarily a wrong one — a label can be weeks old and still true.
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.
Why it matters
A label is an observation with a date on it. An old observation is not necessarily wrong, but a reader routing on it deserves to know how old it is.
What we measured
We read each provider's own published cadence claim and its own published counter on the same day, and set the two side by side.
What the evidence shows
- Sealed days behind the archive figures
- 11
- Observations in that window
- 29,022
- Issue
- Machine Commerce Reality Index: #001 — August 2026
- Published
11 days
2026-08-21 · 2026-08-22 · 2026-08-23 · 2026-08-24 · 2026-08-25 · 2026-08-26 · 2026-08-27 · 2026-08-28 · 2026-08-29 · 2026-08-30 · 2026-08-31
All 11 days behind these figures (21–31 Aug 2026) are sealed, each with its published hash on the Integrity page; each date opens that day's manifest.
What this does not say
- Third-party figures are those providers' own published numbers, quoted with their own denominators and the date we read them. They are not our measurements of those providers.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| One dated read of every third-party number this issue quotes, taken from each provider's own published surface with an identifying user agent, each response hashed and excerpted so the quotation can be checked against what was actually served. | 53dbfbc27286e3e303caa0a9bbe804b851883f4f04e608537f9a0b1ff280ed12 |
The terms
The terms this question uses are defined in the glossary.
Corrections and disputes
This answer names a party we measure. The route to dispute a reading is on the corrections page.
Corrections to this issue are on the corrections register, and this answer reads from the record rather than from a copy.