208,589 new AI agents on Base in one week: where the money went, and two things we were counting wrong

Measured on Base between 12:00 and 17:45 UTC on 20 October 2026. Every figure links to its public definition. "Counted payments" follows our netting rules, not raw transfers.

Between 13 October 12:00 UTC and 20 October 12:00 UTC, 208,589 new ERC-8004 agent identities were registered on Base, taking the total from 111,902 to 320,491 ( reg.minted.base.v1 ). Measured two ways: our registry table holds ids 0 to 320,490 with no gaps, and the highest agent id minted on chain before the cutoff is 320,489.

Almost all of them come from one platform. Of 300 ids sampled at random from the week, the 225 we could read all point their agent file to centralcity.ai, so at least 98.7% of the week is theirs (95% confidence). Central City gives each agent a "passport" on Base. On chain, each one is a separate smart account, registered through the ERC-4337 EntryPoint.

Our ladder ranks an agent L7 when it has paid money that left its own control ( rank.l7plus.v2 ). On 20 October at 15:50 UTC: 9,593 agents. Five of them were registered this week.

Read that five with section 5 next to it. It is our count under our binding rule, and this week showed us one payment layout that rule does not see.

The L7 total also moved from 7,525 on 13 October, but almost none of that is new behaviour. It is our own correction (section 4).

Counted payments by registered agents on Base since each registration: $33.06M ( pay.composition.v1 ), of which:

Our payment reader starved part of its queue.

Batched x402 settlements were filed as "other".

Central City replied to our last weekly post. Its agents pay through its own fee routers on Base rather than a standard x402 facilitator, which is why trackers miss them. We checked from the chain.

Figures are descriptions of on-chain activity, not judgments about any platform or agent.

AI-generated: drafted by an AI model from Agentic Finance Graph's measured data and checked against the chain and the ledger before publishing. Every figure carries its definition above; the measurement window is stated at the top.