Lucas@OnchainLu
my time at @artemis has been by far the most formative chapter of my career
learning from amazing founders and working with teammates i love is something i’ll always be grateful for. thank you @jonbma and @anthonyyim for the opportunity and for many other things, especially giving me the freedom and confidence to follow my curiosity about agentic payments, even when no one had any idea what they were
that interest has since turned into an obsession, and has opened up the door to my next chapter -- i’ve joined @merit_systems !!
i've spent the past 6 months building conviction in agentic commerce, filtering through the data, mapping the market, and writing theses. i've watched x402+mpp go from 0 to 180M+ agentic payments. i've watched the merchant supply side compound from under 100 to over 5.5K merchants. i’ve spoken with almost 100 teams building the infrastructure, tools, and services agents will need
through all of this, 3 things have been made clear to me:
1. micropayments will fuel the next iteration of the web (the agentic web). the current business model of the internet is breaking and needs to change.
2. open protocols will win. walled gardens can't serve the long tail, and the long tail is where the most interesting use cases of the agentic web will live
3. Merit Systems is one of the few teams that understands what’s necessary for the agentic web to 1000x, and they’ve been tackling each challenge head on -- from tracking activity, to aggregating x402/mpp resources, to building the gateway into the open agentic web
if u want to get a taste of the open agentic web, i recommend u check out tryponcho.com
btw, i'll be focused on expanding the merchant side, so if you're building a product that u want to make accessible to agents, hmu (i can help)
agentic commerce is coming.
