Financial technology company Stripe says blockchain may need to process up to 1 billion transactions per second to support the future of artificially intelligent agents.
In their annual letter posted to X on Tuesday, Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison and co-founder John Collison outlined the company’s performance through 2025, as well as some predictions for the near future.
One of the key topics was the introduction of AI agents and what their widespread use might look like in the future. The two claimed that blockchain trading activity will soon surge as AI agents gradually become the main conductors of online transactions.
However, Stripe’s co-founders said blockchain has significant infrastructure gaps and will require massive scaling to meet this new demand.
“Last year, one of the major blockchains experienced a memecoin trading frenzy that delayed payments to one Bridge user by over 12 hours and caused the price per transaction to jump 35x. These operational issues are already significant, but they will only get worse as the appetite for trading is expected to increase significantly,” they wrote, adding:
“In our view, agents will soon be responsible for most internet transactions, and we will likely need a blockchain that supports more than a million or even billion transactions per second.”
sauce: stripe
According to Chainspect data, Internet Computer Protocol and Solana are currently the top two blockchains in terms of transaction speed, at approximately 1,196 transactions and 1,140 transactions per second (TPS), respectively.
They are currently the only two companies on the market processing more than 1,000 TPS, and at their peak they processed 25,621 TPS and 5,289 TPS, respectively.
As it stands, the theoretical maximums for both networks are only 209,708 TPS and 65,000 TPS, respectively.
AI commerce has passed the “hype stage”
In addition to forecasting future demand, Stripe executives also outlined the main types of use cases that AI agents will serve online. They say AI agents are now moving beyond the “pure hype” phase and into the phase of construction and “real-world experimentation.”
Related: Stripe considers acquiring part or all of PayPal: Report
They outlined five levels of AI agent functionality. The first two levels include web form entry and descriptive search. This allows you to find results for users based on a description of the situation rather than specific attributes.
According to Stripe executives, the AI agents are “on the borderline” between Levels 1 and 2.
The next three levels include persistence – remembering user information, requirements, and settings; Delegate — Handle tasks like grocery shopping for you. and expectations — being able to provide solutions to problems and schedules without prompting.
“As with the early Internet, the future success of agent commerce will depend on universal interoperability. Moving beyond the five levels will depend on our ability to work together,” they wrote, adding:
“If all goes well, the little critters will no longer be confined to walled gardens, but will be swooping down wide-open protocol highways.”
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