PING and BTC inscriptions are surprisingly similar? The "Pandora's Box" of the x402 protocol has already been opened

Everyone in the market is talking about the x402 protocol’s meme coin PING, saying it closely resembles the BTC inscription frenzy of 2023. Is it really that similar? If so, will the inscription market’s evolutionary path repeat itself?

To get straight to the point: It will repeat, and the logic chain is almost identical.

Core Similarity: On-chain Data Is Valid, Off-chain Rules Decide Everything

Let’s first look at how inscriptions work.

Users send transactions to the BTC mainnet and occupy specific UTXOs. But the BTC mainnet itself doesn’t care whether this transaction is “valid” or not—the real decision-maker is the Ordinals indexer. It acts as a third-party referee: after scanning all on-chain transactions, it uses its own rules—such as “first come, first served”—to decide which ones are real inscriptions.

How does PING work? It’s just the same thing in a different package.

Users transfer USDC on the Base chain to a specified address (which is dynamically returned by x402scan), essentially issuing a “payment request.” But the Base chain and the x402 protocol themselves have no idea you’re minting tokens; in their eyes, it’s just a regular ERC20 transfer.

What actually turns this transfer into a “mint action” is still the x402scan indexer. It scans all USDC sent to specific addresses on the Base chain, applies the rule of 1 USDC for 5,000 PING, determines which transactions are “valid,” keeps records in an off-chain database, and then distributes the tokens via smart contracts.

See the pattern? It’s exactly the same.

The Controversy: Is There Any Real Value?

When inscriptions first emerged, the Bitcoin Core team was furious. The reason was simple—the BTC mainnet was flooded with dust transactions, causing congestion with little real utility.

By the same logic, PING is in a similar spot. But just like the BTC mainnet, the x402 protocol is an open standard, so there’s not much that can be done about it in the short term.

What’s more subtle: with inscriptions, at least your assets are still on the BTC mainnet, so if inscriptions die out, you can recover some of your BTC. But minting PING? Your USDC goes straight into the x402scan-designated treasury wallet. The team is crowdfunding and issuing tokens at the same time, and the x402 protocol is just being used as a tool, getting nothing in return.

Wait, isn’t this a criticism?

Quite the opposite.

This behavior is more like a “charge horn” operation—it forcibly creates a use case for the x402 protocol, delivers instant exposure, and even acts as a stress test. Put simply, this is a singularity moment for the x402 narrative, sparking a series of improvements and possible ecosystem prosperity.

Will It Evolve Like the Inscription Market? Absolutely

As mentioned before, PING’s significance really lies in the x402scan indexer. But the problems are obvious:

• Assets are held by a centralized entity, which goes against the x402 protocol’s original intent of enabling payment channels for AI Agents
• It may not be fully compatible with other x402 protocol projects
• There’s no unified standard for minting, transferring, or burning tokens

So, just as we saw with the evolution from BRC20 → ARC20 → SRC20 → Runes, we’re bound to see a bunch of new “more legitimate” approaches pop up.

There are plenty of possible improvements: changing the custody model, altering the minting transaction process, pushing for native protocol support… To exaggerate a bit, even if x402scan or the treasury runs off with the funds, the trend has already started.

Pandora’s box has been opened.

A Final Word

To reiterate: the explosion of the x402 narrative is inevitable. PING is just the starting gun—how the market evolves from here is anyone’s guess.

Everything above is just personal insight, not investment advice. But there’s no need to stress—this is a trend worth paying attention to and joining in on.