TLDR Tech / Crypto
x402 Ships SIWX Credential-Based Authorization
x402 added credential-based authorization via SIWX (Sign-In-With-X), a CAIP-122 wallet authentication layer that removes the per-request on-chain settlement requirement from V1. V1's settlement latency (1-2 seconds on Base, 400ms on Solana) made high-frequency use cases like LLM inference, data feeds, and multi-tool agent sessions impractical, and the model could not support stateful APIs or websites that fire 20-50 sub-requests per page load. With SIWX, users pay once and authenticate subsequent requests through locally verified wallet signatures in microseconds, with no blockchain round-trip or facilitator, enabling paywalled websites, streaming media, stateful APIs such as Crossmint's embedded wallets, and persistent-identity AI agent workflows. The tradeoff shifts business logic complexity to servers, as each service must define its own access semantics independently.
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