Is an x402 payment register's total the same as what buyers paid sellers?
The short answer
No. A register's total depends on which facilitators it tracks, and a transfer that reaches a listed seller's address is not always a customer's: it can come from a testing service, or from a wallet that address had already sent money to.
As published in the issue
A register's total and what buyers paid listed sellers are different quantities. A reader using a register to size the market needs to know which facilitators it tracks. Even at a listed seller's address, a transfer can come from a testing service or from a wallet that previously received money from that address.
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
Two public settlement registers as captured each day through October, set beside every authorised USDC transfer that reached the Base payment addresses listed x402 services quoted in the same month. The registers' totals are the registers' own; the transfers were read from the chain.
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
- A test payment or a seller buying from its own service can appear in these totals.
- A register's total and what buyers paid listed sellers are different quantities.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Two public settlement registers as captured each day: the rows of the 31 October captures, the 4 October capture taken after one register revised its own totals, every pair of consecutive captures in which a register's all-time figures fell, the changes of the leading row, and the names on one register and not on the other. Every figure under a register's own field is reported by that register; the sums, shares and averages are arithmetic over its rows. The 31 October captures were checked against that day's sealed manifest. | e79606eb545de0ca031f8e5d4dd249ba32466a549aef13760b89f01fa2f1fb69 | |
| The filters over those transfers: the measured total with probe402's own payments removed and the zero address set aside, then the high, central and low figures in turn, each with what it removed, and the same figures for each receiving address. Arithmetic over the filed rows, checked against a hand-built case with a known answer. | 9642313155b78db4a92772f06f7c0fb8393be773d36e1072cbf4d0c1c9b0f6e3 |
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.