BlockBeats news, on April 21, blockchain analytics firm Nansen announced a comprehensive upgrade to its on-chain data API, introducing a "pay-per-use" model based on the x402 protocol and PayAI infrastructure. Users can now make micropayments in USDC to instantly query wallet profiles, token flows, and smart money signals, without being bound by monthly subscriptions, mandatory approvals, or long-term contracts.
Nansen points out that traditional subscription models are highly unfriendly to AI agents and developers—AI agents often need to make intermittent queries before entering idle states, developers in prototyping stages face uncertain future needs, and researchers are locked into unnecessary fixed fees. The new solution is built around the open payment standard x402: when a request is made to a paid endpoint, the server responds with a 402 Payment Required status code, specifying the amount, currency, and chain information. The client then completes an on-chain USDC transaction and attaches a payment receipt to gain access to the data. The entire “request-invoice-pay-deliver” workflow is fully programmable, enabling AI agents to autonomously handle payments.
Nansen is offering its API with two pricing tiers, both settled in USDC on the Base or Solana chains: the Basic tier charges $0.01 per call, providing access to core data such as token filtering, wallet balances and history, DEX trades, and P&L summaries; the Advanced tier charges $0.05 per call, unlocking proprietary signals including smart money net flows, position distributions, and P&L leaderboards. In practical use cases, running a smart money alert system costs approximately $0.15 per execution, wallet profiling costs about $0.07, and token research costs around $0.07.