Hello,There are two distinct schools of thought in crypto. As a publication, we get to have a front-row view of both. One argues that everything is a market and pricing things is how we get clarity. The other believes crypto is better fintech rails. Our publishing calendar swings between both views because, as with all markets, there is no single truth. We are simply curating all possible models. In today’s issue, we have Sumanth breaking down how a new payment standard is evolving on the web. Put simply, it asks the question: what would happen if you could pay per article? To find the answer, we go back to the early 1990s and see what happened when AOL tried pricing access to the internet on a per-minute basis. We walk down the alley of Microsoft pricing its SaaS subscriptions. And eventually, we sit at a cafe where Claude has been pricing conversations on a per-text basis.In the process, we lay down an explanation of what x402 is, who the key players are, and what it means for platforms like Substack. The agentic web is a theme we have been increasingly exploring internally. If you are building, researching, or investing along these themes, reach out to us at venture@decentralised.co.JoelThe Internet’s business model is out of touch with how we use it. In 2009, the average American visited over one hundred sites per month. Today, the average user opens fewer than thirty apps per month, yet spends far more time inside them. About half an hour a day then, closer to five hours now. The winners - Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, Google, and Meta, became aggregators who pooled consumer demand and converted wandering into habits. They priced those habits as subscriptions. This works because human attention follows patterns. We watch Netflix most evenings. We order from Amazon weekly. Prime bundles include shipping, returns, and streaming for $139/year. The subscription removes much of the constant pain. Amazon is now pushing ads to subscribers to juice margins, forcing users t