GoKite AI is building the foundation of the Agentic Internet by providing AI agents with verifiable identity, trust, and payment rails through PoAI, KitePass, and X402. This enables machines to function as genuine economic participants.
With backing from PayPal and Coinbase, GoKite is bridging Web2 finance with crypto infrastructure. Its strategic investors indicate a significant convergence between traditional payment networks and autonomous machine economies.
The project is redefining the role of the internet itself. As AI agents begin to engage in transactions, the web is transitioning from a human-centric network to a hybrid machine economy, and GoKite is developing its core protocol layer.
The Moment Machines Started to Pay
In the autumn of 2025, a long-forgotten HTTP status code, "402 Payment Required," began to resurface on developer forums. This code, originally written into the internet's standards over three decades prior, had remained unused until this point.
That brief line of code became a symbol of a significant shift, marking the first time the internet's users were no longer exclusively human.
When Coinbase introduced the X402 protocol, which allows AI agents to conduct autonomous on-chain payments, it was initially dismissed by many as a novelty. However, within weeks, thousands of developers were actively experimenting with it on GitHub. Machines began independently renting compute power, purchasing data, and paying for digital services. Code was effectively paying code, and the system proved functional.
GoKite AI stood at the forefront of this movement. It is not another project focused on "AI plus blockchain" hype, but rather an initiative to reconstruct the fundamental infrastructure of the web. GoKite aims to equip AI agents with identity, trust, and native payment rails, enabling them to participate in the economy as independent entities.
For the first time, the internet must accommodate a new category of users: non-human economic actors. In this evolving landscape, AI is poised to do more than just execute tasks; it can negotiate contracts, transfer value, and settle transactions without human intervention. Machines are learning to make payments, and the internet is quietly welcoming new protagonists.
Three Gaps and a Rebuild
GoKite AI was founded on a straightforward observation: the internet was never designed for machines. Every login, payment, and rule implicitly assumes a human user. However, as artificial intelligence progresses from being mere tools to becoming autonomous agents, this fundamental assumption becomes invalid.
The GoKite team identified three essential layers that require reconstruction to enable the existence of the Agentic Internet.
Identity: Machines require a verifiable method to confirm their identity. Existing systems like OAuth, phone numbers, and emails were created for individuals, not algorithms. GoKite has developed KitePass, a cryptographic passport for AI agents that logs actions, reputation, and permissions. This allows agents to operate across different platforms while maintaining trust.
Trust: While humans rely on contracts and institutions, AI agents cannot. GoKite's Proof of Attributed Intelligence (PoAI) consensus mechanism rewards every verifiable contribution to the AI value chain—including data providers, model developers, and active agents—based on actual utility. Trust is not granted by intermediaries but enforced by code.
Payment: Machine transactions are continuous and global. Traditional systems like Visa or PayPal would be overwhelmed by hundreds of micropayments per second. Through deep integration with Coinbase's X402 standard, GoKite facilitates instant, low-cost stablecoin settlements, making value transfer as seamless as a function call.
Collectively, these components form a self-sustaining economy. An AI agent authenticates using KitePass, builds reputation and earns rewards through PoAI, and settles payments via X402. This constitutes an economic operating system for machines, rather than just another application.
GoKite has opted to build as a sovereign Layer-1 chain within the Avalanche ecosystem, a pragmatic choice. Avalanche subnets provide specialized environments, such as low-latency subnets for trading bots or privacy-compliant ones for healthcare agents. This approach combines high performance with modularity, ensuring the system remains both fast and adaptable.
While the technical architecture appears calm and methodical, its implications are revolutionary. If TCP/IP enabled global information transfer, PoAI makes intelligence verifiable and valuable. This represents not merely a new layer, but a fundamental rewrite of the internet's incentive structure.
Where Technology, Capital, and Belief Meet
Every new protocol begins with a small group of individuals willing to challenge conventional wisdom.
GoKite's founders are not opportunists seeking fleeting trends; they are seasoned professionals in AI infrastructure. CEO Chi Zhang previously led data engineering at Databricks, and CTO Scott Shi was instrumental in building Salesforce Einstein AI before scaling Uber's real-time AI systems. They have dedicated years to transforming complex AI theories into functional, global systems.
Their conviction is firm: the next wave of AI innovation will occur at the economic layer, not the model layer. For machines to be active participants, they require identity and the capacity to make payments.
This conviction attracted investors who share a long-term perspective. In mid-2025, PayPal Ventures and Coinbase Ventures jointly invested $33 million in GoKite. PayPal described the investment as supporting "the foundation of the agent-to-agent economy," noting it was their sole investment in blockchain-based AI payments. Coinbase's investment followed GoKite's integration of X402, indicating alignment on building the next generation of crypto-native payment infrastructure.
This convergence provided significant validation, establishing a bridge between traditional finance and the crypto space, with both sectors backing the same vision. It signified more than just capital; it was a signal of shared belief.
GoKite has since begun to translate that belief into tangible progress. Its partnership with Shopify enables AI agents to autonomously discover merchants, negotiate prices, and complete purchases. Chainlink provides reliable data feeds, and the zero-knowledge network Brevis enhances privacy and verification. From e-commerce to DeFi, GoKite is quietly weaving the fabric of the Agentic Internet.
Importantly, GoKite does not compete with projects like Fetch.ai, Bittensor, or SingularityNET; it complements them. Fetch agents may eventually transact on GoKite's payment rails, and Bittensor models could leverage X402 to monetize their intelligence. GoKite is not creating another platform for AI; it is establishing the underlying infrastructure.
When the Internet No Longer Belongs Only to Humans
From a distance, GoKite AI appears calm and understated, eschewing loud marketing campaigns and token hype. However, its work fundamentally challenges one of the web's oldest assumptions.
That assumption posits that every online economic interaction must involve a human.
GoKite is rendering this notion obsolete. Within its system, AI agents function as autonomous entities possessing cryptographic identity, accounts, credit history, and digital assets. They can represent individuals, companies, or even other AIs, performing tasks and generating income on their behalf.
Machines are acquiring economic personhood. As machines begin to engage in transactions with one another, the very structure of the economy starts to transform.
The risks are tangible. Brand confusion persists, partly due to a defunct software tool previously named "Kite" that faced privacy violation criticisms, leaving lingering digital noise in search results. Regulatory uncertainty adds further complexity, as the intersection of AI and crypto remains a highly ambiguous frontier.
Yet, history seldom rewards the hesitant. Every significant advancement in the internet's evolution—from static web pages to programmable money—has been driven by builders who dared to rewrite the existing rules.
GoKite's ambition is reminiscent of Ethereum's early days. It aims not to fix a single industry but to redefine who can participate in the network economy. If Ethereum made human finance programmable, GoKite seeks to make machine trust computable.
Years from now, when autonomous agents routinely collaborate, transact, and generate revenue, people may look back at that quiet autumn of 2025—the year HTTP 402 was revived, the year machines learned to pay, the moment the internet began its transformation into the Agentic Web.
Beneath this transformation, GoKite AI is diligently laying the groundwork and logic that could bestow machines with their own identity, trust, and wealth. The protagonists of the internet are changing, and GoKite is already constructing their world.