Stripe: Blockchain May Need to Support 1 Billion Transactions Per Second to Meet AI Agent Demand

Odaily News Financial technology company Stripe's CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison and co-founder John Collison stated in their annual letter released on Tuesday that as AI agents gradually become the primary executors of online transactions, blockchain transaction activity will significantly increase. Blockchains may need to support over 1 million or even 1 billion transactions per second.

The two pointed out that there is a significant gap in current blockchain infrastructure, requiring massive scaling to meet future demands. They mentioned that a previous surge in memecoin transactions on a major blockchain caused payment delays exceeding 12 hours for Bridge users, with single transaction fees increasing 35-fold.

According to Chainspect data, the Internet Computer Protocol and Solana are currently the two fastest blockchains in terms of transaction speed, processing approximately 1,196 and 1,140 transactions per second respectively. They are the only two networks exceeding 1,000 transactions per second, with theoretical peaks of 209,708 and 65,000 transactions per second respectively.

The Stripe co-founders also outlined five capability tiers for AI agents, including filling out web forms, descriptive search, remembering user information, executing tasks on behalf of users, and proactively anticipating needs. They stated that AI agents are currently at the critical point of the first two tiers, having moved beyond pure hype into a phase of practical application exploration.