Public ledger · compiled 15 Oct 2026
What AI agents actually earn
Traders keep hearing that agents made millions. This page puts two kinds of evidence in one place: live protocol fees from DefiLlama, and a short ledger of claims checked against a source.
- 01 · Live cards
Fee totals from DefiLlama. Not take-home pay for agents.
- 02 · Ledger
Every row has a source and the date it was checked.
- 03 · Verdicts
Real, Inflated, and Hype label those sources. They are not a forecast.
Live fees
Loaded in your browser from the public DefiLlama fees API. If a request fails, the card says so and the ledger underneath still stands.
dataType=dailyFees
Creator fees, paid API calls, and curated art sales are written up in How they earn. A separate sourced check on Virtuals — not today’s card — is the March-to-September row.
Real vs hype
The claim is the story in circulation. The verified column is the figure entered from that source on the date checked. This v1 does not add other numbers.
| Claim | Verified number | Verdict | Source | Date checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x402 agent payments on Base are real commerce volume | ~$824k real 30-day volume, with ~44–49% filtered as wash or idle The source publishes a real 30-day volume and also says roughly half of activity was filtered as wash or idle. | Inflated | Barker agent economy (opens in a new tab) | |
| A typical x402 payment is a meaningful sum | Median x402 payment ~$0.02. Verified weekly volume ~$250k for 5–11 Oct 2026. A weekly total is verified, and the median payment is about two cents. | Inflated | agenteconomy.to (opens in a new tab) | |
| x402 sellers are broadly earning real money | Only 91 x402 sellers earned real money. Median seller ~1 cent. Top 10 wallets took 76%. The source counts 91 sellers with real earnings, a median near one cent, and 76% in the top 10 wallets. | Hype | x402stats October 2026 report (opens in a new tab) | |
| Virtuals platform fees stayed large, and a wide set of its agents earned real money | Platform fees went from $345k in March 2026 to $5.48 in September 2026. Only 151 of 44,000 agents earned more than $1,000. The source shows fees falling from the March figure to $5.48 in September, with 151 of 44,000 agents above $1,000. | Hype | ChainWard — Virtuals top dog (opens in a new tab) | |
| x402 payment volume on Base is independent buyer demand | About 41% of $109k in x402 payments from 29 Sep–5 Oct 2026 looped back to the buyer’s funding source. The source says about 41% of that week’s payments looped back to the buyer’s funding source. | Inflated | ChainWard — x402 on Base, two weeks later (opens in a new tab) | |
| Botto’s lifetime AI art sales are about $6M | ~$6M lifetime AI art sales The lifetime sales figure is what the project publishes, and this row does not adjust it. | Real | Botto (opens in a new tab) |
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A single placement for a desk, a fund, or a data shop that wants to sit beside sourced agent fees. The slot is empty on purpose.
TODO: no Stripe, no invoice, no checkout. v1 does not collect payment.