$PING rebounds 50%, a quick look at the $PING-based launchpad project c402.market

Written by: David, TechFlow

The x402 narrative has been hot for half a month, but not many new assets have emerged from it.

The reason is, firstly, because x402 is more oriented towards payment services between AIs and does not fit the usual crypto “asset creation” playbook;

Another reason is that most crypto projects around the x402 protocol are building infrastructure, benefiting more from the hype of the tech narrative rather than making substantial short-term product progress.

However, the first asset created based on x402, $PING (even though it’s a meme), has become the first to make a move.

On November 10, the official PING Twitter account @pingobserver announced the launch of the token launchpad c402.market based on the x402 protocol, expected to go live at 10 PM (UTC+8) that night.

Once the news broke, the price of PING tokens quickly surged from the day’s low, with a 24-hour increase of nearly 50%.

In short, the core mechanism of c402.market is: All new tokens issued on this platform will by default be paired for trading with $PING.

In other words, PING is no longer just a meme token in the x402 narrative, but has transformed into the "base currency" of the entire c402 ecosystem. If you want to participate in new projects on the platform, you need to hold PING.

This is an old playbook. Pump.fun in the Solana ecosystem made SOL a must-have for meme trading; various launchpads on the Base chain gave ETH real use cases.

Now, c402.market is trying to let PING play a similar role in the x402 ecosystem.

At this point in time, the market is divided between bulls and bears. Some believe the market is in a bear phase, with no new narratives and thus are pessimistic about new assets; others believe altcoin season is arriving in a form you might not expect, and there must be local opportunities within.

As trading data for the x402 protocol has declined, launching a more trading- and asset-creation-oriented x402 concept launchpad may be a local opportunity in the current market.

However, can PING succeed in transforming from a simple meme coin to an so-called ecosystem currency? For ordinary investors, what opportunities are there, and what pitfalls are hidden?

Quick Review of x402 and PING

For those unfamiliar with x402, here’s a quick summary:

x402 is an open payment protocol launched by Coinbase in May 2025, allowing websites, APIs, and AI agents to directly use stablecoins (mainly USDC) for payments, without accounts, passwords, or API keys.

Its core mechanism is simple, as we introduced a month ago: when you access a paid service, the server returns an HTTP 402 status code (a "payment required" code that has long existed in internet protocols but was never used), telling you how much you need to pay.

You send an on-chain payment with your wallet, then re-request; after the server verifies, you get access via X402. The whole process can be completed in 2 seconds, with zero fees.

(Related reading: Google and Visa are both making moves—what investment opportunities are hidden in the underestimated x402 protocol? )

The reason x402 became popular is inseparable from $PING, as the latter truly brought a wealth effect.

$PING is the first token issued through the x402 protocol. Users don’t need to register an account on a website; just visit a URL, receive a "402 Payment Required" prompt, pay a small amount of USDC, and after re-requesting, receive PING tokens.

This token itself doesn’t have much use, more like a meme, but its DNA comes with the halo of “the first token generated by x402,” reminiscent of the previous wave of inscriptions. So, there has been a lot of speculation around it in the past month. At launch, it once surged 30x, and its market cap broke through 60 million USD.

However, after PING became popular, the x402 ecosystem fell into an awkward situation:

The protocol is cool, the tech narrative is strong, and the big players are backing it; but apart from the meme coin PING, the ecosystem lacks more "assets" for people to participate in. x402 is more like a payment infrastructure than a token issuance tool.

Most related projects are doing AI Agent services, API marketplaces—these are B2B businesses, too far from the “token speculation” needs of ordinary crypto investors.

The market needs a place that can continuously produce new assets and allow retail investors to participate in early-stage projects. This is the background for the emergence of c402.market.

You may not like this approach, but to dismiss it as pure hype and not pay attention is another kind of extremism.

c402.market, the Pump.fun of the x402 Ecosystem?

Open the official website of c402.market, and you’ll see a concise and bold slogan:

"The mintpad for internet capital markets"

That’s right, it’s the familiar ICP narrative again. Combining the grand terms "internet" and "capital markets," they try to dress up what is essentially a token launch platform in revolutionary clothing.

Simply put, c402.market is a token launchpad based on the x402 protocol, where anyone can quickly issue tokens, and these tokens will automatically be paired for trading with $PING.

Before talking about the launch mechanism, you need to understand what a “c402 token” is. c402 is a self-created token standard, essentially an ERC-20 token that supports the x402 protocol and has a built-in public minting mechanism. The official term is "internet coins."

This means that tokens issued on c402.markets are not just ordinary ERC-20s, but natively support the x402 payment protocol.

Theoretically, these tokens can be directly used in AI Agent payment scenarios or any application that requires HTTP 402 status code-triggered payments. But in reality, most people care about their speculative value, not the technical features.

The launch mechanism of c402.market heavily borrows from Pump.fun’s "Bonding Curve" model, but with some adjustments. Each token has a fixed total supply of 1 billion, with no team allocation and no reserved shares.

According to the official documentation, the allocation structure for a launched token is:

• 49% distributed through public minting, with each mint requiring a payment of 1 USDC

• 49% automatically used to provide liquidity

• 2% as a developer reward

Minting process:

1. Create a token: Anyone can create a token by providing a name, code, description, and image. Creation requires a 1 USDC "anti-spam" fee

2. Wait for minting to open: After the token is created, minting will automatically start after a fixed period (interestingly, the official documentation uses █ to cover the exact time, which may be a few to a dozen minutes; the exact time may only be revealed after the product officially launches)

3. Minting phase: Users mint tokens by paying 1 USDC. The number of mints is limited

4. Automatic listing: When all minting shares are sold out, the collected USDC is automatically processed

Principle of PING Pairing: USDC → PING → Liquidity Pool

This is the most critical part of the entire mechanism and the core logic by which PING benefits.

According to the project’s Github, when a c402 token mint is completed, all collected USDC is used to purchase the designated paired token (initially only PING is supported), then together with the remaining 49% of the token supply, it is added as liquidity to the pool and locked.

For example: Suppose someone creates a token called $COIN and selects $PING as the paired asset. The minting phase requires a certain number of transactions; let’s assume it’s 10,000, which means 10,000 USDC.

1. Minting phase: Users mint with USDC, and 10,000 USDC is collected

2. Automatic swap: The 10,000 USDC is automatically used to buy $PING via Uniswap

3. Provide liquidity: The purchased PING + 490 million $COIN (49% supply) are added to the Uniswap v4 liquidity pool and permanently locked

4. Developer reward: 20 million $COIN (2% supply) goes to the token creator.

What does this mechanism mean for PING?

Every time a new token is successfully minted on c402.market, there is a forced buy order of USDC → PING. If 10 projects are minted on the platform every day, each collecting 10,000 USDC, that’s a daily PING buy order of 100,000 USDC.

This may also explain why the launch of c402.market caused the price of PING to soar by 50%—the market is pricing in the expectation of sustained buy orders or the potential for the ecosystem to succeed.

Who’s Making Money?

The fee structure of c402.market is as follows:

For minters:

• Each mint pays 1 USDC

• 2% of which is a platform fee (0.02 USDC)

• Gas fee (very cheap on Base chain, but still required)

For token creators:

• Pay a 1 USDC "anti-spam" fee when creating a token on c402

• Receive 2% of the token supply as a reward

• Get a 1% fee share from liquidity pool trades (partially paid in tokens) on c402

The documentation also mentions that if you build your own frontend and set yourself as the referrer, you can take the 2% platform fee, achieving zero platform fee minting.

Although only PING is supported as a paired asset initially, the c402.market GitHub repository has already opened a "paired token whitelist" submission mechanism on github. Any project can submit a PR to apply to add its token as a pairing option, but it must have sufficient (locked) liquidity on Uniswap v3 or v4, and the JSON format and image specifications must meet requirements; after approval, it must also be manually whitelisted on-chain.

This means that in the future, c402.market may support USDC, ETH, or other tokens as paired assets, not just PING. But at least at launch, PING is the only option.

It can be seen that c402.market’s mechanism design is more inclined to incentivize token creators, rather than just benefiting minters and traders. But as everyone knows, this could also lead to the platform being flooded with low-quality projects, as creators have economic incentives to keep launching new tokens.

As of press time, c402.market has just announced its imminent launch (10 PM, November 10, UTC+8). Many details in the official documentation are still covered by █, including the exact number of mints, time window, "bribery mechanism," etc.

This may be to prevent bots from preparing in advance, or the team may not have finalized them yet.

The real test will come after the first batch of projects go live, the first liquidity is formed, and the first traders start to compete—only then will we see how this mechanism performs in practice.

Finally, asset creation and new launches are always the theme of the crypto market; now it’s just shifted to the x402 concept. In the absence of many new narratives, cautious participation may be a pragmatic choice.