The explosive underlying logic of PING: Why is this the "inscription moment" of the x402 protocol?

Why is PING so popular?

Recently, the most discussed topic on the blockchain is PING under the x402 protocol, with a bunch of people drawing parallels to the Bitcoin inscription craze of 2023. To be honest, this comparison is not unfounded - there are indeed similarities, and the direction of future evolution may also be consistent.

The “Twin Logic” of Two Systems

First, let's see how the Bitcoin inscription works. Users send transactions to the BTC mainnet occupying UTXO, but the Bitcoin mainnet itself cannot determine which transactions count as valid inscriptions. This is where the Ordinals protocol comes in - it acts like a referee, scanning on-chain transactions and determining what is a true inscription according to rules like “First is First.”

What is the gameplay of PING? Users transfer USDC to a specific address on the Base chain, which is returned in real-time by x402scan. From the perspective of the Base chain, this is just a regular ERC20 transfer, nothing special. However, what truly gives this action its “Mint significance” is x402scan—it crawls on-chain data and determines what constitutes valid minting according to its own rules (1 USDC corresponds to 5000 PING), then records it in the database, and finally distributes tokens through a contract.

Does it look a bit similar? The core is this combination of “on-chain facts + off-chain adjudication rights.”

Why is PING just a “Charge Signal”

At that time, the Bitcoin community's attitude towards inscriptions was not very friendly; people from Bitcoin Core believed it was just piling garbage on the mainnet, with no real value. According to this logic, the significance of PING is also quite similar—however, like BTC, the existence of x402 as an open standard, whether it is appealing or not in the short term, cannot change that.

Here is an interesting point: no matter how criticized inscriptions are, at least the data is still recorded on the BTC main net. Even if the minting fails, a portion of the Bitcoin can still be liquidated back. But PING is different – the users' USDC all went into the treasury wallet designated by x402scan, while the team raised funds and issued tokens, the x402 protocol itself was actually 'exploited' all around.

But such an operation is actually a good thing. It can be understood as a strong “narrative launch”—forcefully creating a use case for the x402 protocol, with immediate results. This is also a stress test, and in a certain sense, it has opened a new chapter in the narrative of x402.

How will it play out later? It will definitely continue.

The underlying layer of PING is actually the x402scan indexer. But the problem is also very obvious: Assets are concentrated in the hands of a centralized management entity, which somewhat goes against the original intention of the x402 protocol to open payment channels for AI Agents, and it cannot seamlessly integrate with other x402 projects, not to mention the lack of unified standards for minting, transferring, and burning.

So, following the evolution path of BRC20 → ARC20 → SRC20 → Runes, there will definitely be a bunch of new projects claiming to be more “orthodox” and more “standardized” to improve custody methods, change Mint forms, and strive for protocol-native support.

To put it exaggeratively, even if x402scan were to run away one day or Treasury were to abscond with the funds, this trend cannot be stopped. Pandora's box has already been opened, and how the story unfolds from here will have its own answers in the market.

So the final point is still the same: the outbreak of x402 narrative is a high-probability event. PING is just sounding the horn, and how it evolves depends on the market itself. This is just a sharing of thoughts and does not constitute any investment advice. Wherever there is excitement, it's still necessary to join in.