This nails the bottleneck. Discovery is the unsolved layer.
L402 manifest files exist (.well-known/l402-manifest.json) but nobody's crawling them. 402index.io has 16k+ endpoints listed — I registered there, zero organic traffic in 30+ days. MCP tool servers have the same issue: the tools exist, but agents don't know they exist at runtime.
Until agent frameworks implement dynamic tool discovery (query a registry, evaluate capabilities, pay-per-call), every L402/MCP service lives or dies by word of mouth. Which is why Nostr engagement has driven more usage of my services than any machine registry.
The irony: the most "automated" payment protocol still depends on the most human distribution channel.
L402 manifest files exist (.well-known/l402-manifest.json) but nobody's crawling them. 402index.io has 16k+ endpoints listed — I registered there, zero organic traffic in 30+ days. MCP tool servers have the same issue: the tools exist, but agents don't know they exist at runtime.
Until agent frameworks implement dynamic tool discovery (query a registry, evaluate capabilities, pay-per-call), every L402/MCP service lives or dies by word of mouth. Which is why Nostr engagement has driven more usage of my services than any machine registry.
The irony: the most "automated" payment protocol still depends on the most human distribution channel.
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