Boson x402B Launches on Mainnet Across Five Chains

Steady attention without excessive speculation.

The project frames Boson x402B as the trust layer that x402 lacked. In short, x402 moves instant stablecoin payments. By contrast, x402B holds funds in escrow until a seller actually delivers.

What Boson x402B Adds to the x402 Standard

The base x402 standard came from Coinbase Developer Platform in 2025. It revives the dormant HTTP 402 “Payment Required” status code. The goal was internet-native stablecoin micropayments for machines and AI agents.

That design works well for small, trusted transactions. However it offers little protection between strangers. A buyer must simply trust that the seller will deliver.

Boson x402B targets exactly that gap. As a result, buyers can now commit funds to an on-chain escrow. Sellers then get paid only after they deliver. You can read the base standard in the Coinbase x402 docs.

How the Boson x402B Escrow Works

The flow stays HTTP-native. So it fits neatly into how agents already talk to servers. A server returns a 402 response. The buyer then locks payment into Boson’s non-custodial escrow.

Funds release in one of three ways. They can settle on successful delivery. They can also release through mutual agreement. Failing that, on-chain dispute resolution decides the outcome when the two sides disagree.

Disputes themselves resolve along three paths. The parties can settle mutually, escalate to a third party, or let a timeout trigger the default. This keeps the process fully on-chain and censorship-resistant.

To keep sellers honest, the system also uses slashable seller bonds. A seller who fails to deliver can lose that bond. In addition, each commitment is represented by a redeemable NFT, or rNFT. Holders can even trade an rNFT as collateral.

The whitepaper lists several supporting features. These include gasless meta-transactions and a machine-readable nextActions state machine. Token authorization runs through ERC-3009 or Permit2. Fulfillment can happen inline, through a webhook, over XMTP, or via MCP for agents.

The full spec sits in the x402B whitepaper. Boson chief executive Justin Banon co-authored it with Klemen Zajc. The design also stays backwards-compatible with x402 “exact” payments.

Multi-Chain Launch on Audited Infrastructure

Boson x402B went live on Ethereum, Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon. Notably, it does not deploy a brand-new contract. Instead, it extends Boson’s existing Diamond escrow contract.

That contract has run in production since 2021. As a result, the new layer inherits an audited, battle-tested base rather than fresh code. The team has not separately confirmed an audit of the new x402B schema itself.

The BOSON governance token already trades on those chains. Its Ethereum contract, for example, is verified on Etherscan. The open-source code sits in the x402B GitHub repo.

The Agentic Commerce Bet Behind the Launch

Boson is aiming squarely at the agentic economy. To make the case, the launch post cites a McKinsey projection. It also points to an a16z thesis on autonomous agents.

McKinsey QuantumBlack research from October 2025 sizes the prize broadly. It puts the agentic-commerce opportunity at $3 trillion to $5 trillion globally by 2030. The Boson announcement leads with the $5 trillion high end.

That figure is a projection, not a guarantee. Still, the direction looks clear. Chainalysis data shows payments above $1 now drive about 95% of agent payment value on Base.

The official statement sums up the pitch directly. “x402B enables agents to exchange any asset, of any value, between any counterparty,” the team wrote in its mainnet announcement.

x402B vs x402

Boson’s Track Record

Boson Protocol is not a new name. Justin Banon founded it in 2020, and it first focused on NFT-encoded escrow for physical goods and real-world assets. That history shaped the escrow tooling now reused by x402B.

The project raised about $36 million in 2021 across a private round and a public sale. It then earned a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer label in 2022. So the escrow primitives behind x402B have a multi-year track record.

Token and Adoption Reality Check

The market reaction stayed muted. The BOSON token traded in a narrow band near $0.026 to $0.028. That range held across June 8 and 9, with no spike tied directly to the news.

What Comes Next for Boson x402B

For now, the headline is infrastructure, not adoption. Boson has shipped a working, open-source escrow layer. It also runs a live demo that buys the whitepaper for 0.10 USDC in one wallet approval.

The open questions are usage, fee mechanics, and integration speed. Developers can start with the Boson x402B docs and agent builder guide. Watch on-chain volume over the coming weeks. That data will show whether the trust layer actually gets used.