Originally reported by PANews on November 13, 2026, at 08:26 (UTC+8), citing Crypto Briefing.
Lightning Labs released the open-source pi402 extension on November 12. Built for Pi coding agents, it lets an agent pay for its own inference with bitcoin over the Lightning Network.
The payment flow starts when an agent encounters a price. Using the L402 protocol, pi402 pairs an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response with a Lightning invoice. The agent pays the invoice and can then resume work. PANews describes this as pay-per-token billing based on actual usage, without requiring the agent to register an account or use an API key or credit card.
Sellers can accept payments through Aperture and Lightmeter. According to the report, neither buyer nor seller needs to run a Lightning node; an Ark-based Wavelength wallet handles payments.